The Perspective of Historical Sociology: The Individual as Homo-Sociologicus Through Society and History 1787433641, 9781787433649

Table of contents :
List of Reviewers
Contents
Acknowledgments
Part I. The Perspective of Historical Sociology (By Way of Introduction)
Part II. Societies and the Processes of Change
Part III. Ideas of the Sociological “Founders”
Part IV. Systems, Structures, and Functions
Part V. Civilizational Analysis
Part VI. The Modern World, Its Formative Processes and Transformations
Part VII. The Human Individual and History
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

THE PERSPECTIVE OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY The Individual as Homo-Sociologicus through Society and History

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THE PERSPECTIVE OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY The Individual as Homo-Sociologicus through Society and History BY

^ Í S^ UBRT JIR Charles University, Faculty of Humanities, Prague, Czech Republic

United Kingdom North America India Malaysia China

Japan

Emerald Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2017 Copyright r 2017 Emerald Publishing Limited Reprints and permissions service Contact: [email protected] No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-78743-364-9 (Print) ISBN: 978-1-78743-363-2 (Online) ISBN: 978-1-78743-456-1 (Epub)

ISOQAR certified Management System, awarded to Emerald for adherence to Environmental standard ISO 14001:2004. Certificate Number 1985 ISO 14001

List of Reviewers

Prof. Dennis Smith, Loughborough University Prof. Johann P. Arnason, La Trobe University Dr. Massimiliano Ruzzeddu, University N. Cusano in Rome

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Contents

List of Reviewers

v

Acknowledgments

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Part I.

The Perspective of Historical Sociology (By Way of Introduction) The Path to Historical Sociology History and Sociology Theoretical Dilemmas

Part II. Societies and the Processes of Change The Dimension of Time Temporalized Sociology The Division of Historical Time History as Life’s Teacher Social Change — Different Approaches to its Observation and Analysis The Theories of Cyclical Development Theories of Developmental Discontinuity and Breaks The Materialist Conception of History Revolution Collective Actors of Social Change The Theory of Breaks The Theory of Linear Continuous Development Sequential and Processual Explanatory Models Evolutionary Theory Some New Approaches to the Issue of Social Change Crisis as a Challenge Etymology and Semantics of the Concept of Crisis

1 3 7 16 21 21 24 28 31 33 36 40 40 42 43 44 47 47 49 52 53 54

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Risk, Crisis, Catastrophe, and Collapse One Concept — Many Manifestations Plurality of Explanatory Frameworks Current Issues

56 59 61 64

Part III. Ideas of the Sociological “Founders” Sociology as a Science of Social Statics and Dynamics The Evolution of the Social Organism Historical Materialism Predecessors The Thinker Who Wished to Change the World Explaining the Emergence of Capitalism Digression on the Early rationalization of time Sociology as a Science about Social Facts A Digression on Collective Memory

67 68 72 73 74 78 84 92 102 109

Part IV. Systems, Structures, and Functions The Social System and Evolution Inequality, Stratification, Mobility Theories of Conflict Social Functions of Conflicts Social Conflict in Modern Society Appendix to Conflict Theory Structuralism and Poststructuralism Invariable Structures Variable Structures Functional Differentiation and Its Consequences World-System

117 119 123 128 130 133 136 137 140 143 146 149

Part V. Civilizational Analysis The Civilizing Process Paradigms of Human Condition Civilizations of the Axial Age

155 159 167 172

Part VI.

The Modern World, Its Formative Processes and Transformations Pathways to Modern Society Citizens and the State Different Types of Social Revolution Revolutions in the International Context

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Con t e n t s

183 185 185 186 187

The Formation of Modern Nations Nationalism and High Culture The National Interest The Dark Side of Modernization The Banality of Evil Advocate for the Open Society A Critique of Ideological Myths and Totalitarian Tendencies Wars, Conflicts, and Violence Coercion and Violence The Networks of Power From the First Modernity to the Second Modernity Story of Modernization Theory The Transformations of Contemporary Societies

188 190 194 197 198 200 203 207 208 211 212 213 216 229

Part VII. The Human Individual and History Individualization in the Perspective of Historical Sociological Thinking Individualism and Holism Homo Sociologicus The Human Individual and Its Place in History

230 232 242 254

Bibliography Index

265 289

Co nt ents

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Acknowledgments

This book is the culmination of my longstanding labor in the field of historical sociology. My approach within this has been accompanied by a number of scholars who have helped me research and establish my orientation. At the very beginning, during my studies at the Charles University in Prague at the turn of the 1980s, these included my teacher Eduard Urbanek. Later, in the 1990s, when I began to get acquainted with the work of Norbert Elias, I was very much helped by Hermann Korte, who at that time worked at the University of Hamburg. Of great importance to my professional development too were repeated study visits at the University of Vienna spent alongside Reinhold Knoll, at the University of Konstanz alongside Bernhard Giesen, and at the Free University of Berlin alongside Harald Wenzel. My approach to historical sociology has been associated with my interest in time, in which context I associated with Patrick Baert of Cambridge University, who greatly influenced me with his concept of temporalized sociology. Johann Pal Arnason and Willfried Spohn have played key roles in my direction in the last decade, and with their help and support I founded the Department of Historical Sociology at Charles University in Prague and designed the content of the study program taught since 2009. Last but not least, I cannot forget Prof. Dennis Smith from Loughborough University, whom I have consulted on many topics over the past few years. The book I present here to the reader would not have been written without the help of Martin Tharp, a doctoral student of historical sociology, and the long-term cooperation of my

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friend, proofreader, and language advisor Edward Everett. In addition, this book represents one of the outputs of the Homo sociologicus revisited project (No.: 15-14478S), financially supported by the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic GACR. I would also like to express my thanks to the representatives of Emerald Publishing for their friendly assistance in guiding this book to the light of publication.

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Part

The Perspective of Historical Sociology (By Way of Introduction)

I

In the late 1950s in his book The Sociological Imagination, Charles Wright Mills formulated a remarkable reflection on the relationship of the human individual to history, one which was exceptional in the context of the then-sociological thought for several reasons. First, Mills talked about the importance of this relationship to sociology at a time when it was widely understood as a science concerning contemporary societies, and the past was wholly consigned, as it were, to history. Second, Mills applied sociological knowledge not only to social entities but also to individual human lives and destinies. Finally, there was the concept of “sociological imagination” as an attribute to be developed. Mills argued that the sociological imagination would allow those who possessed it to understand the broader historical scene in its importance to the inner life and careers of various individuals. “Sociological imagination” is intended to help in the understanding of history and biography and their interrelationship within society; that is its challenge and its promise (Mills, 1959, pp. 3 6). In this book, I want to supplement Mills’ ideas, aspiring to contribute to the development and cultivation of the sociological imagination in the directions outlined earlier. Apart from providing an educational guide to leading figures of historical sociology,

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I want to examine the relationship between history and sociology, and to give attention to the issue of how sociology looks at the human individual in society and history. As Elias put it, we want to look at how individual people combine to form society and how this society is able to change in relation to its history (Elias, 1991). The perspective that allows us to examine these issues is that of historical sociology, which at one and the same time we want to bring to readers and to develop. This work is divided into seven parts. In the first, I discuss the issue of the interrelationship between sociology and historical science and what vision of man, society, and history can be offered by historical sociology. The dominant theme of the second part is social change, raising the issue of historical time and what lies behind the expression “temporalized sociology.” I introduce different theories on social change, and include the issue of crises, collapses, and disasters. In the third part, I return to the founders of sociological thinking — Comte, Spencer, Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Halbwachs — and analyze what of their intellectual heritage endures and the essence of their significance, topicality, and inspirational power. The fourth part presents a macro-sociological perspective as developed in the works of structural functionalism (Parsons), in stratification and conflict theory (Coser, Dahrendorf, Huntington), in structuralism (Lévi-Strauss, Braudel, Foucault), in systems theory (Luhmann), and in world-systems theory (Wallerstein). The themes of the fifth part are the concepts of culture and civilization: Norbert Elias and his theory of the civilizing process, the paradigms of the human condition analyzed by Jaroslav Krejci, and the concept of the axial age developed by Shmuel N. Eisenstadt. The sixth part is devoted to the problems of modernization; it includes subchapters on the paths to modern society (Bendix, Moore, Skocpol), nationalism (Gellner, Hroch), totalitarianism (Arendt, Popper, Aron), wars and violence (Tilly, Mann), the theory of modernization (Alexander), the first and second modernities (Giddens, Beck and further), and the transformations of contemporary societies. In the final, seventh part of the book, the issue of the sociological perspective on the human

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individual in society and history is summarized, with specific emphasis on the issue of major historical individuals.

The Path to Historical Sociology As an academic discipline, historical sociology is relatively young, yet its intellectual and theoretical roots reach back to the 19th century. The historical sociology of today began roughly in the 1970s; this was based, however, on the work of thinkers active in the 19th century. The expression historical sociology may give the impression of a kind of hybrid of history and sociology — roughly half and half. This impression is misleading. Historical sociology is first and foremost a part of sociology, though in our case a sociology that emphasizes the historical perspective in its approach to the study of social phenomena. In other words, we are interested in the phenomena and problems of the contemporary world, but we also consider that a true understanding of these phenomena requires approaching them from a historical perspective, mindful of their past development. One of the key themes of contemporary sociology is the process of modernization — specifically, how social change occurs in the form of a radical alteration of society, for example, the transformation of traditional agrarian countries into modern, industrial ones. Contemporary historical sociology places an accent on comparison, and the use of comparative methods; historical “comparative” sociology is often mentioned. In principle, this comparison can be made in the dimensions of time and space. In the first case, this involves comparison of single phases or stages of historical development in historical succession. In the second case, individual countries are compared with each other, or wider cultures and civilizations. For contemporary historical sociology, this second approach predominates, based on the comparison of events that take place in parallel in different places around the globe. Its intent is to reveal what is common or differs between individual cases, how the social processes in various areas are alike, and what distinguishes them. The Per spec tive of Hist oric al Sociology (By Way of Intr oduct ion)

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Historical sociology is of course not limited to the topic of modernization. It is a broad scientific approach that addresses many areas and problems in culture, religion, nationalism, politics, international relations, globalization, military conflicts, the economy, labor, science, art, everyday life, family life, collective memory, and various other subtopics. Within this approach, historical sociology is structured around three central elements: general theory, research methodology, and special thematic areas. It is true that historical sociology is not only based on one dominant paradigm or theoretical conception, but that different theories and theoretical approaches coexist, and we try to consider historical sociology in the plurality of its theoretical foundations. Different theorists, and different scientific schools, are discussed, and their commonalities and distinctive elements duly noted. Historical sociology itself has a history, and if we want to understand this field as it exists today, and why it pursues certain tasks and objectives, its previous development must be appreciated, both in the context of sociology as a broader endeavor and the relations between the academically canonical disciplines of sociology and history. In general, it may be said that the development of sociology has passed through three phases. The first lasted from the emergence of sociology in the 19th century up to the 1920s, and is sometimes called the period of the great theories. Sociology’s origins are connected with Europe and the European university system, where sociology developed primarily as a theoretical discipline, largely through university professors with philosophical training. Sociological research received little encouragement. It is important to bear in mind that this first period marks the activity of the “classic” sociologists, whose names and ideas remain of importance to current historical sociology as it in many ways continues their work. Among others, these include Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Ferdinand Tönnies, Georg Simmel, Emile Durkheim, and Vilfredo Pareto. What all these had in common was that their sociology contained aspects of historical sociology, because the historical perspective was important to their conceptions of sociology.

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The second phase is the period from the 1920s to the 1950s, from the end of World War I until just after World War II. During this second period, the focus of the development of sociology moved to the United States. In America, sociology became a discipline from which scientific outputs with clear practical use were expected. To fulfill these expectations, sociology had to develop empirical research to generate useful knowledge. The main source of this was quantitative surveys based on questionnaires. Along with the emphasis on empirical research, this period was characterized by a shift away from great theories, seen as speculative, unfounded, and unscientific. At the same time, a further shift occurred — namely the divergence of sociology from history. A significant majority of sociologists (not all, but certainly most) began to accept the idea that sociology had to be a science only and exclusively concerned with contemporary societies, and should not deal with the past. History should accordingly be left entirely up to historical scholarship. The third phase of the development of sociology began in the 1950s, and is often mentioned as a period of renewed interest in sociological theory. By this point, sociologists had recognized that sociology could not be based on empirical research alone, but that the development of sociological theory was itself a necessity. The upsurge in interest in theory had two causes. The first was that in the previous period sociologists had accumulated an enormous quantity of empirical data, and they realized that for the further development of sociological knowledge these findings needed to be subjected to theoretical analysis. The second was that it had become clear that the problems and experience of mankind in the 20th century could not be studied only on the basis of empirical research, and that the key issues of contemporary societies required the application of a theoretical approach. As a result, theoretical reflections in sociology revived. The main theorist of sociology in the 1950s and 1960s was Talcott Parsons. It is important to note that the theoretical approaches which began to prevail were of an ahistorical (nonhistorical) The Per spec tive of Hist oric al Sociology (By Way of Intr oduct ion)

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character, attempting to create theoretical models applicable to all types of societies, regardless of historical differences and specificities. Writings that addressed the issue of historical sociology occasionally appeared, but were a very rare phenomenon. An increase of interest in historical sociology became noticeable from the 1970s onwards. This interest has expanded, but never become dominant in sociology. Today, historical sociology is one of the branches of contemporary sociology. Its main representatives are Norbert Elias, Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, Charles Tilly, Theda Skocpol, Michael Mann, and Immanuel Wallerstein. Of vital importance for historical sociology are, understandably, not only its relations to sociology, but also to historical scholarship. Broadly speaking, we can say that the paths of history and sociology began to diverge significantly in the 19th century, when historical scholarship began to emphasize specific historical sources and the uniqueness of historical events, and rejected attempts at wider generalization. By contrast, sociology in the same era was working toward the creation of broad theoretical generalizations based on analyses of history. The sociologists of the 19th century often regarded historians and historical scholarship somewhat dismissively, judging that historical science was unable to arrive at the higher level of generalization reached in sociology. In other words, sociology then viewed history as a kind of auxiliary discipline useful mostly for supplying the partial knowledge that sociology could analyze and generalize. During the 20th century, when sociology reoriented itself toward the research of contemporary societies, the gap between history and sociology widened, and the possibility of mutual dialogue between sociology and history became ever more remote. With some simplification, the present discipline of historical sociology can be seen as an effort to re-establish a dialogue between history and sociology. In other words, historical sociology is a sort of frontier discipline attempting to develop the hitherto lackluster interdisciplinary cooperation between sociology and history.

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History and Sociology In his book Central Problems in Social Theory, Anthony Giddens (1979, p. 230) asserted that neither logical nor methodological reasons exist for a division between social sciences and history. Shortly thereafter, this claim was addressed by an influential representative of the British historical-sociological profession, Philip Abrams (1982, p. 2), who under Giddens’ influence formulated the argument that history and sociology are ever and always one and the same thing. Giddens himself then tried to argue this position in what is perhaps his most important theoretical work, The Constitution of Society, in which he states that there is nothing to prove a difference between the historical and the social sciences with sufficient rational justification: “Historical research is social research, and vice versa” (Giddens, 1984, p. 358). If a boundary can be said to exist, it is established through the division of labor on a common subject, but this gives no reason for any logical or methodological schism. Whether Giddens’ claim is accepted or not, the fact remains that sociologists and historians do not speak a common language. Peter Burke in this connection reminds us of the statement of Fernand Braudel about a “dialogue of the deaf.” According to Burke (1980, pp. 13 14), it is necessary to see not only two different professions but also two structures with different languages, preferred values and styles of thinking, shaped by differences in education and training. For sociologists, it is more common to work with numbers, while historians work with words; sociologists tend toward the elucidation of general rules and the ignoring of variations; historians on the contrary tend to lay stress on the individual and the specific. Burke (ibid.) believes that both disciplines are threatened by a dangerous narrowing of their perspectives. Historians specializing in a particular area tend to perceive it as something unique, which prevents them from seeing it as a combination of elements which have parallels in other places. By contrast, the tendency among sociologists is to generalize everything through contemporary The Per spec tive of Hist oric al Sociology (By Way of Intr oduct ion)

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experience and ignore the perspective of long-term historical processes and social change. Moreover, the relationship between the two professions is marred by a number of myths and stereotypes: sociologists are perceived by historians as manipulators of abstract jargon without any sense for place and time, while historians are seen as collectors of fragments and curiosities, incapable of analyzing the information before them. Many social scientists today believe the boundaries that separate sociology and history should be overcome, yet others resist these efforts. One such is John H. Goldthorpe. Goldthorpe’s view is that history and sociology are two significantly different intellectual enterprises (Goldthorpe, 1991, p. 225). Sociologists, he believes, could never create a great theory of a “transhistorical” type. Any assumption that sociology and history are already — or will become — one and the same discipline, he considers not only wrong but also dangerously misleading, and it is his recommendation to sociologists to turn away from engaging in explorations in the field of history. To understand the origins of today’s opinions on the question of the relationship between sociology and history, we must recall the background to this complex issue. Peter Burke (1980, 15 ff.) directs our attention to the 18th century, recalling an era in which a number of leading social theorists, such as Charles-Louis Montesquieu (1689 1755), Adam Ferguson (1723 1816), and John Millar (1753 1801), produced contributions both to the field of history and to pre-sociological thinking. At that time the boundaries of academic disciplines did not present such a significant problem, hence political history, social history, and pre-sociological thinking could be combined in the writings of individual authors and discussed in mutual interrelation. Other illustrations of this tendency are offered by the work of British historian Edward Gibbon (1737 1794) or later on the writings of French historian Jules Michelet (1798 1874). However, starting in the mid-19th century significant variations emerged. The dominant approach was that of the German historian Leopold von Ranke (1795 1886), holding that the science of history should be based on the systematic and critical research of

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sources, to show how “it actually was” (zu zeigen, wie es eigentlich gewesen) (Wiersing, 2007, p. 369). Ranke’s historiography was thus oriented toward political history, which could be studied best on the basis of official documents. This tendency was supported by the emergence of a genuine professionalization of history, with the creation of the first scientific institutes and periodicals. Governments supported the writing of history as a tool of propaganda, or at least for the official education of the state’s citizens. The work of social and cultural historians came to be viewed as disorganized, insufficiently scientific, and incompatible with new professional standards. One victim of this trend was Jacob Christoph Burckhardt (1818 1897), whose work The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) did not meet with success at the time of its creation, and gained recognition as a major work only subsequently. An exception occurred in France with the historian (and teacher of Émile Durkheim) Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges (1830 1889), whose study of the ancient city-state La Cité antique (1864) won respect even though it connected historical and sociological perspectives. In Germany, though, harsh criticism and misunderstanding were the fate of historian Karl Lamprecht (1856 1915), who in opposition to the prevailing individualism and belief that great men made history (Heinrich von Treitschke) attempted to build social, economic, and cultural history (ibid., pp. 474 477). Since the 19th century, then, many historians have turned away from sociology on the grounds that it is too abstract, simplistic, and unable to catch the uniqueness of particular events. On the theoretical and methodological level, this problem was addressed by German philosophers Wilhelm Dilthey (1833 1911), Wilhelm Windelband (1848 1915), and others (Käsler, 1978, pp. 142 162). Dilthey emphasized the difference between the natural sciences, which strive to explain (erklären) “from the outside,” and humanistic sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) whose objective is “internal” understanding (verstehen). Windelband described natural sciences as “nomothetic,” aiming at the discovery of general laws, and the humanities as “idiographic,” with the task of describing single, unique events. Many sociologists appropriated this boundary The Per spec tive of Hist oric al Sociology (By Way of Intr oduct ion)

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between idiographic and nomothetic sciences, linking it more to the difference between history, oriented particularly and descriptively, and sociology, whose task is to attain to generalization. In turn, historians perceived sociology as a pseudoscience with methods suitable for enquiry into nature but not human history. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, sociology was actively interested not just in the present but in the past as well. In the era of Augustus Comte, Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Vilfredo Pareto, and others, history formed an essential, integral component of sociological conceptions. (In the case of Weber, the link to history is the strongest, so much so that it may be said his sociology is subordinated to history.) Predominant in the thinking of many sociologists of that period was belief in the theory of progress, and the stance that history is not just a random sequence of events but can reveal definitive laws of historical development (a belief that Karl R. Popper would later criticize as “historicism”). The ambitions of many sociological conceptions of history were substantial, and often went hand in hand with a dismissive attitude toward history, which seemed overwhelmed by the enumeration of unnecessary details and lacking in a proper organization of knowledge. If in such an approach toward history the discipline was granted any meaning, it was perhaps as source material for comparative sociological studies (Burke, 1989, p. 19). While in the German-speaking countries at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries very few historians dared to deviate from Ranke’s framework (Karl Lamprecht’s attempt met with little understanding), in other countries historians gradually began to appear who contributed to the development of social history. In the United States, an important role was played by Frederick Jackson Turner (1861 1932), who tried to explain America’s unique position in terms of boundaries, not as the delimitations between states, but the ever-expanding frontier between “civilization” and “wilderness.” James Harvey Robinson (1863 1936) stressed the areas of social, scientific, and intellectual development against straightforward political history. Influenced by Marx, Charles Austin Beard (1874 1948) interpreted the American Civil

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War as a conflict between the industrialized North and the agrarian South. In France, a new historical school inspired by François Simiand (1873 1935) criticized the reduction of history to historical events and great personalities. The Belgian Henri Pirenne (1862 1936) developed a social and economic history of Europe, while the works of the Dutch scholar Johan Huizinga (1872 1945), dedicated to the late Middle Ages, made a significant contribution to cultural history. Alongside changes within the historical profession, sociology for its part began to shift its focus away from the broad chronological range of the field’s intellectual founders. In particular, the highly speculative nature of the social development theories that emerged in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries greatly influenced the move away from the study of long-term social dynamics in the development of sociological thought (though not entirely, as the example of Pitirim A. Sorokin showed). In sociology, the prevailing mode was to elaborate models of the current state of affairs, and to focus on the analysis of data evidencing the present (Norbert Elias later dubbed this the “retreat of sociology to the present”). If formerly the sources of such data had been official statistics, now, particularly in the United States, sociologists began rapidly developing their own methods of empirical research (the Chicago School, Gallup, Lazarsfeld, and many others). Along with the growing professionalization of sociology, the field gained much self-confidence, and at the same time distanced itself from history. The approaches of the historical sciences ceased to be considered relevant in sociology and their findings were no longer accepted as “raw material” for sociological analysis. However, the 1920s brought a significant shift to the area of history as well, associated with the start of the French school of Annales (named after its major journal Annales d’histoire écononomique et sociale),1 initiated by two professors at the University of Strasbourg, 1. The journal was launched in 1929, and was later renamed, being published since 1994 under the name Annales, histoire, sciences sociale.

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Lucien Febvre (1878 1956) and Marc Bloch (1886 1944). They rejected the traditional dominance of political history and attempted to establish the study of history in a broader sense. Drawing inspiration from neighboring disciplines, they were open to the influence of Durkheim’s sociology, and especially to the thenemerging ideas of structuralism. While in the period before World War II the Annales historians represented only a relatively marginal current, after 1945 they emerged as mainstream, their position enhanced in the second generation by Febvre’s pupil Fernand Braudel (author of the monumental work La méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’epoque de Philippe II, published in 1949), and in the third generation by a highly diverse group of historians (representing the so-called nouvelle histoire/new history, characterized among other things by interest in the history of everyday life), among which were Georges Duby, Jacques le Goff, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Phillippe Ariès, Mona Ozouf, François Furet, and others. Although sociology and history diverged to a notable extent during the 20th century, their complete separation never occurred. Their linkage was underwritten by a research orientation known as “historical sociology.” Contemporary authors (such as Dennis Smith, 2005, p. 134) regard this as a discipline with genuine predecessors (Hume, Smith, Ferguson, Montesquieu, Tocqueville), traceable to the work of the founding fathers of sociological thought (Marx, Weber, Durkheim). The German author Rainer Schützeichel (2004) adds to this the so-called Weimar School of the interwar period (Alfred Weber, Werner Sombart, Alfred von Martin, Eduard Heimann, Franz Oppenheimer, Emil Lederer, Karl Polanyi, Hans Freyer, Adolf Löwe). Another figure from pre-Nazi Europe was Karl Mannheim, who applied historical perspectives in the sociology of knowledge. Across the Atlantic, Robert King Merton, inspired by Max Weber assessed the influence of Protestantism — specifically English Puritanism — on the development of the natural sciences (Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England, Merton, 1970 [1938]). Russian-born Pitirim A. Sorokin, who emigrated to America in the 1920s, wrote an extensive work, Social and Cultural

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Dynamics, which he published in the United States in 1937; in this book he describes his vision of history, which he regarded as a cyclical change of three types of cultural super-systems: “sensate,” “ideational,” and “integral.” George C. Homans, meanwhile, a representative of behaviorist sociology, published a directly historical study, entitled English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century (Homans, 1941). Robert Neelly Bellah — a member of the circle of sociologist Talcott Parsons in the 1950s — published Tokugawa Religion, in which he attempts to find a religious equivalent of the Weberian Protestant ethic in the Japanese modernization process (Bellah, 1969 [1957)]. Neil Smelser, in his Social Change in the Industrial Revolution, analyses the question of social change, taking as its focus the example of the development of the cotton industry during the English industrial revolution (Smelser, 1959). Seymour Martin Lipset wrote the book The First New Nation, which was dedicated to the American War of Independence and the formation of the American nation (Lipset, 1963). This flowering of historical-sociological work achieved a high point with the work of Talcott Parsons and his book Societies: An Evolutionary and Comparative Perspective in which he developed an original theory of social evolution based on the concept of increasing the adaptive capacity of systems through functional differentiation (Parsons, 1966).2 Though authored in the period leading up to World War II, it was only in the mid-1970s that the two-volume work Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation (in English (1994)) of Norbert Elias garnered wide recognition. Based on his “psychogenetic” and “sociogenetic” investigations, he presented his findings in terms of the results of two interrelated theories: the theory of the civilization of manners, covering historical changes in personality and behavior (Part 1), and the theory of state formation (Part 2). Subsequently others of Elias’ books (1983, 1987, 1992b, 2001) were published, including a rich secondary literature. 2. A certain interest in history among American sociologists is also evidenced in the books Sociology and History (Cahnman & Boskoff, 1964; Lipset & Hofstadter, 1968.)

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From the perspective of historical sociology, a complement to Elias’ approach can be found in the works of Michel Foucault, which focus on historical changes in power and knowledge, and their interrelationship (Foucault, 1967, 1970, 1972, 1979, 1980). Occasionally termed the “German Foucault,” the historian Reinhart Koselleck dealt with the history of concepts — Begriffsgeschichte (Koselleck, 2006) — and as an editor oversaw the creation of a monumental eight-volume series Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe (Koselleck, Bruner, & Conze, 1972 1997). The British historian Peter Burke, meanwhile, forged for himself a position on the border between the history of culture and sociology of knowledge (Burke, 1980, 1992, 1997). Finally, another author whose many works can be considered in this context is Ernest Gellner, especially his writings focused on issues of nationalism (Gellner, 1983, 1998) and general questions concerning the structure of human history (Gellner, 1988, Plough, Sword and Book). In American historical sociology, the left-oriented Barrington Moore (1966) played an important role from the late 1960s up to his death. Another important figure of this period was Reinhard Bendix (1996 [1964], 1978, 2006), who was inspired by Max Weber. Current literature increasingly speaks about the school of “new historical sociology,” (Spohn, 2005) which is particularly associated with three names: Charles Tilly (1976 [1964], 1978, 1981, 1990, 1984, 2004), Theda Skocpol (1979), and Michael Mann (1986, 1993, 2005, 2012, 2013). All these authors’ research interests largely focus on development in the fields of power — especially military power/armed conflicts, violence, revolutions, and wars. An important part of contemporary historical sociology consists of conceptions of world-systems, civilizational pluralism, and modernization diversity. The analysis of the world system presented by Immanuel Wallerstein (1974, 1980, 1989, 2003, 2011) proceeded mainly on the basis of two sources of inspiration: a neo-Marxist analysis leading to dependency theory, and Fernand Braudel’s conception of historical science. Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt meanwhile dealt with the comparative research of civilizations; in the 1980s he focused on the issue of “axial-age” civilizations, later developing the concept of multiple modernities

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(Eisenstadt, 1986, 1996, 2003a, 2003b). Johann Pall Arnason (2003, 2005, Arnason, Eisenstadt, & Wittrock, 2005) addresses the topics of the development of civilizations and diverse types of modernization from a similar perspective. All of the above-mentioned authors tend toward an interdisciplinary approach in their research and publications, providing examples of how — if narrow academic-professional boundaries are disregarded — it becomes possible to arrive at new, original knowledge. Such interdisciplinary approaches are becoming a hallmark of contemporary historical sociology, but while the main tone of contemporary historical sociology is set by such large and ambitious projects, its field is not limited to them. No less a part of this field are research efforts into integration and disintegration processes, relationships of continuity and discontinuity, religious and cultural pluralism, the linking of the global and the local, the opportunities and risks of social development and the analysis of conflict situations and ways to overcome them. Historical sociology now has its own professional journals (the Journal of Historical Sociology, established in 1988; the Czech journal Historická Sociologie, from 2009), expert forums, and representation within the International Sociological Association ISA (Research Committee No. 56 “Historical Sociology”). It also boasts an extensive scientific literature, a range of textbooks (Abrams, 1982; Bühl, 2003; Lachmann, 2013; Romanovskyi, 2009; Schützeichel, 2004; Skocpol, 1985; Smith, 1991; S^ ubrt, 2007; Szakolczai, 2000), and works of an encyclopedic nature (Delanty & Isin, 2003). Historical sociology seeks to create a space for dialogue between history and sociology, for their better communication and cooperation, yet this does not imply that its representatives believe that the boundaries between the two disciplines should be completely erased. Social reality is so complex that both sciences are important for its exploration. At the same time, it is also true that, as academic specializations develop and deepen, boundaries and obstructions emerge between scientific branches which must be bridged in order to acquire an integrated picture of reality, not just a fragmented mosaic. The P erspect ive of His tor ical Soc iolo gy (By Wa y of In tro du ctio n)

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Theoretical Dilemmas Before we turn our attention to the individual representatives of historical sociology, it is necessary to say something about their different starting points. Not just historical sociology but sociology in general is a multi-paradigmatic science, and different approaches and ideas have always existed regarding the foundations on which theory should be built.3 These differences arise from certain basic oppositions and theoretical dilemmas which have divided sociological thought into opposing camps. Such oppositions and dilemmas are numerous,4 and the outline that

3. In the 1970s, Jonathan H. Turner in his book The Structure of Sociological Theory (Turner, 1974) defined four dominant paradigms of sociology as follows: (1) functionalism (T. Parsons, R. K. Merton), (2) conflict theory (R. Dahrendorf, L. Coser), (3) interactionism (G. H. Mead, H. Blumer), (4) exchange theory (G. C. Homans, P. M. Blau); in addition, Turner also dealt with the then-popular ethnomethodology (H. Garfinkel) while asking whether there was any alternative to the given four theoretical paradigms. In the fourth edition of his book (Turner, 1986), the author assigned Garfinkel’s ethnomethodology to interactionism and added a chapter entitled “structural theory,” in which — among other things — he included C. Lévi-Strauss’ structuralism and Anthony Giddens’ structuration theory. In the seventh edition Turner (2003) added an extensive chapter on the theory of evolution (ecological theory, sociobiology, etc.). In chapters devoted to structuralist approaches, “Structuralist theorizing,” he added a new subchapter on P. Bourdieu and the theory of networks. Turner also edited the Handbook of Sociological Theory (Turner, 2001), which differs in just one detail, namely that exchange theory and rational choice are dealt with as “utilitarian” theories. Other publications on this topic include the sixth edition of the work of George Ritzer and Douglas J. Goodman (2004) Modern Sociological Theory. The authors distinguish seven main schools of modern sociological theory: (1) structural functionalism, conflict theory, and neofunctionalism (T. Parsons, R. K. Merton, J. Alexander, R. Dahrendorf), (2) neo-Marxist theory (critical theory, I. Wallerstein, H. Lefebvre, E. Laclau – C. Mouffe), (3) systems theory (N. Luhmann), (4) symbolic interactionism (G. H. Mead, E. Goffman), (5) ethnomethodology (H. Garfinkel), (6) exchange theory, networks, and rational choice theory (G. C. Homans, P. Blau, R. M. Emerson, M. Granovetter, R. Burt, J. Coleman), (7) contemporary feminist theory (J. Bernard, D. E. Smith, P. H. Collins). Furthermore, Ritzer and Douglas talk about recent integrative approaches (R. Collins, Elias) and conceptions integrating action and structure (agency — structure integration: Bourdieu, Habermas, Giddens, Archer). 4. Piotr Sztompka (1979) devoted a whole monographic work to these topics, in which he systematically deals with six dilemmas: (1) Naturalism vs. Antinaturalism, (2) Reductionism vs. Antireductionism, (3) Cognitivism vs. Activism, (4) Neutralism vs. Axiologism, (5) Passivism vs. Autonomism, (6) Collectivism vs. Individualism. More recent work on this

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follows includes only the most important. Essentially, they may be expressed by the following conceptual opposites: consensus and conflict, individualism and holism, micro- and macro-levels (or micro- and macro-perspectives), positivism and anti-positivism, and quantitative and qualitative methodologies. To elaborate slightly, consider the following. Consensus and conflict. This point of division is related to one of the fundamental sociological issues: how orderliness emerges in society, what we call “social order.” Representatives of consensus theory argue that social order in society is the result of consensual factors and forces. Two main factors are considered to be jointly held religious beliefs and the resulting systems of values and norms (called a consensus of values), and cooperation based on division of labor (in other words people are forced to work together to survive). The representatives of conflict theory claim that social order arises from conflicts and struggles and is maintained by means of violent force. Representatives of consensus theory have included the founder of sociology, Auguste Comte, and Talcott Parsons. Perhaps the most significant representative of conflict theory is Karl Marx. Individualism and holism. A broad range of sociological approaches are based on the assumption that the starting point of sociological thought and research must be the individual, his thinking, motivations, and actions. This is the individualistic approach, whose first representative was German sociologist Max Weber. An alternative sociological approach is based on the assumption that sociological thought and research must start with society as a whole — the supra-individual social reality,

theme is the book Core Sociological Dichotomies edited by Chris Jenks (1998), in which the following contradictory conceptual pairs are analyzed : Structure/Action, Continuity/Change, Fact/Value, Local/Global, Qualitative/Quantitative, Normal/Pathological, Culture/Nature, Relativism/Absolutism, Public/Private, Sex/Gender, Race/Ethnicity, Idealism/Materialism, Nationalism/Internationalism, Theory/Practice, Civil/Political, Activity/Passivity, Subject/ Object, Image/Text, Needs/Wishes, Life/Death, High/Mass, Modernity/Postmodernity, Work/Leisure.

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and supra-individual social facts. This is the holistic approach represented originally by French sociologist Emile Durkheim. Micro- and macro-perspectives, meanwhile, deal with different levels of social reality. Micro-sociological approaches are focused on issues of social interaction among individuals within small social groups. An example of such an approach is the work of the American sociologist Erving Goffman, dealing with everyday interactions between individual human beings. Macro-sociological approaches are focused on examining whole societies, cultures, civilizations, and social systems. An example of such an approach is provided by Immanuel Wallerstein, who deals with the historical development of the global “world system.” The opposition between positivism and anti-positivism is related to the question of what the nature of social reality is, and whether this is, or is not, similar to the natural reality explored by natural sciences. Positivist sociology is based on the assumption that there is a similarity and agreement between social reality and natural reality, and sociology therefore has to take the developed natural sciences as a model for the development of sociological theory and research methods. A representative of such a positivist sociology was the American sociologist George A. Lundberg. Anti-positivist sociology argues that natural reality and social reality are fundamentally different, because social reality contains human agency and consciousness, as well as language and culture, which are not present in the natural environment. For that reason, the theory and method of sociology should remain different from the theories and methods of natural sciences. One representative of anti-positivism is, for example, the phenomenological sociology of Alfred Schutz. The tension between positivism and anti-positivism (hermeneutical sociology) is reflected in methodology as the opposition between quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Representatives of positivist-oriented sociology tend to consider social facts as things of a natural character and use quantitative methodology in their research, based on the employment of statistical and mathematical techniques and methods. Representatives of anti-positivist (i.e., hermeneutical) sociology, by contrast, focus on exploring the meaning and significance that

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people associate with their actions, therefore requiring the use of qualitative methodology. In general, we can say that all these above-mentioned approaches have impacted historical sociology, which means that we encounter notably heterogeneous conceptions and currents of thought within the discipline. This theoretical variety reflects the diversity of characters who have successively contributed to the basis of historical sociology, and who attributed vital importance to the matter of history in the founding and formulating of the general theoretical framework of sociology (Marx, Weber, and Durkheim, among others). We may add that theoretical construction of this nature has sometimes been of importance to history itself, as conceptions within it have, as well as being drawn from reflection on certain events, influenced to some extent the shaping of such events themselves. Most particularly this may be seen in concepts connected with the topic of social change, such as crisis, revolution, modernization, etc., of which more follows in the subsequent chapters.

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Part

Societies and the Processes of Change

II

The researcher who recounts and explains social processes of a historical and procedural nature moves in a “field” of temporal and spatial coordinates linked to certain philosophical assumptions, and such professional concepts represent scientific instruments which themselves often have their own history associated with certain theoretical constructs and specialized conceptions. We may not be far from the truth if we say that many creators of socio-historical analyses are not able and willing to reflect on these assumptions and are often not sufficiently sensitive to the extent to which their interpretation may be shaped and determined by them. For this reason, it is worthwhile to focus on specific topics that relate to conceptual frameworks in the fields of history and historical sociology.

The Dimension of Time Modern people have, under the influence of upbringing and education, a tendency to understand time as something quantitative, regular, and invariable — second by second — a kind of abstraction through which we measure life and associated phenomena. Looking at history shows that for other epochs such an understanding would be very distant. Equally strange might be our idea of the linear flow of historical time from the past through the

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present to the future. The archaic view of time saw history as a sort of eternal cycle, an eternal repetition, or eternal return of the same. Mircea Eliade speaks of traditional agrarian societies as well as the large ancient civilizations of Asia, Europe, and America and finds a common feature: even though these societies knew some form of history, they preferred not to take it into account; according to Eliade, there was resistance to particular historical time which linked to the desire for periodic returns to the mythical time of beginnings (Eliade, 1949). In archaic societies, tradition plays an important role. The lives of individual actors consist of the repetition of activities from the distant past. Living members of society act as if in constant communication with their ancestors. Thus, it could be metaphorically said about archaic man that he did not see the future because he walked backward with his head facing the past (Hejdánek, 1990, p. 28). While this cyclical obsession was typical of ancient times, by the Middle Ages it was already common to find a teleological conception of movement from creation to the end of the world. This construction of time is related in medieval Europe to the transition from paganism to Christianity. The Christian understanding of time is based on the three determining moments represented by the beginning (creation), peak (the coming of Christ and crucifixion), and the end (Great Assize). Thanks to these “points of reference,” historical time straightened becoming vector time-linear, and irretrievable (Gurevich, 1985). So-called Western civilization has over centuries developed a considerable sense of the passing of historical time and devotes significant attention to it. There are, however, civilizations and societies for which historical time does not possess such a value. Examples include, for instance, preliterate societies, about which Eric Wolf speaks as “people without history” (Wolf, 1982). Claude Lévi-Strauss used this to establish his typology of “cold” (preliterate) societies, in which time does not play a significant role, and “hot” (modern) societies, in which the time factor dominates (Lévi-Strauss, 1966). A certain indifference to historical time, however, is perhaps most characteristic of Indian culture. J. L. Fischer

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observes that the need for historical time in India is almost completely lacking. “If the European mind is directly affected by the obsession with catching (unstoppable) time, the Indian simply ignores it (and thereby “abolishes” it). Therefore, it is almost impossible to write Indian history with even approximate accuracy.” (Fischer, 1968, p. 116) The issue does not just concern the past, however. The future too, as a dimension of historical time, had to be “discovered.” Returning to the image of ancient peoples facing their past, we can observe that they did not see the future because it lay, as it were, behind them. As presented by M. Machovec, even Greek and Roman Antiquity did not understand the concept of the “future” in the sense attributed to it by the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period. The Latin word futurum (in Greek esomenon) was an empty concept, something of a blank sheet. “The future as something obliging, the future as ‘a better world’, working for the future as something that gives meaning to our efforts — that all came to Europe from Jewish traditions through Christianity, which means by some kind of ‘Christianization’ of ancient traditions. Ancient man from the heyday of Greece and Rome would not have understood ‘living for the future’, and therefore any meaningful mission of man to mold the future was correspondingly seen either as a kind of madness or superstitiousness” (Machovec, 1990, p. 68). Such variation in the historical understandings of time led contemporary German scholar O. Rammstedt to formulate a conception in which he distinguished four historical understandings of time: 1. occasional consciousness of time (based on a distinction made between now/not-now, etc.); 2. cyclical consciousness of time (containing the distinction before/after); 3. linear awareness of time (past/present/future) with a closed future; 4. linear awareness of time with an open future (Rammstedt, 1975, pp. 47 63). Soc ieties an d the Pr oce sse s o f C ha nge

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Orientation toward the future (present already in the religious consciousness) gained substantial social importance at the beginning of the modern period; the future was understood as a problem to be solved. As a result, it was grasped as socially dependent quantity, to be created and planned through current decision making. The image of the future is also associated with the idea of progress; even though this is not a natural part of human consciousness, but a relatively late product of it. Karl Mannheim, in his book Ideology and Utopia (1929), relates this idea to the epoch that immediately preceded his own, which began after the French Revolution. This period brought the idea that the linear progression of historical time was related to the implementation of social development that tended to be positive and which could therefore be considered as progress. The concept of linear progress came to Mannheim from two sources. The first consisted in the fact that in the development of Western society toward capitalism, the bourgeois ideal of reason was confronted with the existing state of society. The tension between the idea of reason (the rational, perfect organization of human life) and the imperfect state of society was overcome by the idea of making progress toward what is reasonable. The second source, according to Mannheim, could be found in German thinking, in which the idea of ascending human development — for example, in Lessing — was placed alongside the “education of the human race” (Mannheim, 1991 [1929], pp. 260 261). The idea of progress dominated the thinking of social science for virtually the entire 19th century. The 20th century which followed, with its well-documented cataclysms, made the idea of development as a constantly upward trend significantly more problematic. With the postmodern thinking of the late 20th century, the theory of progress as a “big story” was finally put into the waste bin of discarded concepts.

Temporalized Sociology In the current sociological research on the subject of time three main problem areas can be identified:

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a. The issue of time as a social category. This range of problems deals with how people of different periods and cultures have developed their ideas about time and how these ideas are gradually changing. This line of thought began with Durkheim, continued with Sorokin, and was later developed by other authors, especially Norbert Elias. b. The issue of the functioning of temporal structures at different levels of social systems. This problem is mainly associated with time as a valuable resource to be rationally dealt with and distributed according to some rules and organization. This area of research includes the problems of the calendar and its reforms (Eviatar Zerubavel, 1981). A subsection relates to the temporal structures of specific social systems and subsystems, for example, research into the urban way of life and its typical rhythms (Melbin, 1987) and the time structures of different social categories or groups: workers, farmers, employees, etc. (Grossin, 1974). c. The issue of the place and role of time in general sociological theory. With the establishment of this issue, the whole discussion shifted to the metatheoretical level. It has become not so much about what scope or range of problems should be addressed, but rather what a general sociological theory should look like in which time plays a decisive role. For a long time, sociological theory did not consider the question of time a serious theoretical and methodological problem. If the task of science is — as scientific-oriented scholars tend to believe — the formulation of scientific rules, then these principles should have universal, lasting validity; they have to work always and everywhere, regardless of space and time. One who helped the reconsideration of the problem of time in sociological theory is Patrick Baert, who advocated the term “temporalized sociology.” Baert, building in many respects on Giddens’ theory of structuration, uses this term to envisage a research program focused on diachronic analysis. Such a program is in opposition to the notion of structural synchronicity (Baert, 1992, p. 4). To clarify his Soc ieties an d the Pr oce sse s o f C ha nge

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intentions, he presents a classification of the four approaches to the issues of time encountered in social theory. The first assumes that the basic principles of order are to be considered unchangeable, invariant in time and space. The historical roots of this approach go back to the Greek atemporal tradition established by Parmenides and Plato. Baert labels this approach the conception of the “eternal permutations of time” (ibid.). According to this tradition, changes observed in time are in fact just imperfect “permutations” or “combinations” of unchanging eternal principles. This Greek idea of an unchanging atemporal world influenced European thinking for a very long time. In the 17th century, it was reflected in the Cartesian view of the world; in the 20th century, it influenced linguistics and social sciences in the orthodox concept of structuralism. The basic idea of structuralism in the social sciences is the assumption of an involuntary atemporal logic common to all cultures of the present, past, and future. The second approach Baert speaks about is similar in concerning the existence of unchanging principles. These only appear through time, however, which emphasizes the passage of time in identifying the main principles of order but at the same time postulates a closed future. Although compared with “eternal permutations” the addition of time implied in this second conception is substantial, it is moderated by the fact that over time no new principles are created, so that the emergence of something new and unexpected may be discounted. Baert therefore speaks of a “closed historical” conception (ibid., p. 6), where the term “closed” refers to the postulated invariability of the main principles. The historical predecessor of this approach can be found in the teleological aspects and finalistic principle of Old and New Testament teaching (which stood in contrast to the predominantly atemporal world view of Greek civilization). A similar view of the world later appears in the philosophy of history, through such big names as Turgot, Condorcet, or Herder. In the 19th century, it occurs in the concept of unilinear evolution, for example, in the work by Taylor. As Baert observes, most science and philosophy of the 19th century had a closed historical view, reflected in a causally

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mechanistic model of physics (supported among other things by the second law of thermodynamics) and the finalistic conceptions of social philosophy of the 18th and 19th centuries. The third approach Baert terms “cognitive-rational control” (ibid., p. 10), which could be considered simply a special level of the second (“closed historic”) conception. Despite its teleological nature, it sees scientific human intervention as a necessary condition for achieving future goals. This formed the basis of Comte’s formula savoir pour prévoir, et prévoir pour saisir and took definite shape in Mannheim’s planning for freedom. In contrast, the fourth approach, which, like the second, is a “closed historical” conception based on the idea that the fundamental principles of order can be detected only through time, he considers the main arranging principles not as invariable, but as open to change. This therefore postulates an “open future” (ibid., p. 8), a conception that has become an integral part of Western thinking during the 19th century. Significant credit for its formation may be ascribed to Darwinian theory, though it was also boosted by H. Bergson with his ideas about cosmic vitalism and time as an invention. Representatives of this stream include G. H. Mead and later Niklas Luhmann with his system theory. In contrast to closed historical conceptions negating the possibility of creativity, and in which the future, even if unknown, is as if ready and waiting to be discovered, the future is here understood as completely open. “The open” approach, generally absent in sociology, represents for Baert the basis of what he describes as temporalized sociology. Baert’s temporalized sociology is based on what is termed a “relatively open historical view,” highlighting the volatile nature of the principles of order and contingency, which represents the primary concept of temporalized sociology alongside the associated idea of discontinuity. Other important concepts include Mead’s concepts of emergence and novelty (new events) and also Bergson’s term durée, duration. An example of temporalized sociology is the civilization theory of Norbert Elias (1994), with the key expression processuality and a focus on research trends in the development of social and personality Soc ieties an d the Pr oce sse s o f C ha nge

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structures.1 According to Elias, these processes have no lawful direction by necessity, and the fact that they have gone for a long time in a certain way gives no guarantee for the future.

The Division of Historical Time Attempts to compartmentalize all the elapsed time of humanity date back to ancient times (e.g., Hesiod and the myth of the ages of gold, silver, bronze, and iron). Christian approaches to the periodization of history (e.g., by St. Augustine) were based on biblical tradition. In the second half of the 17th century, Christoph Cellarius’ humanism brought up the division of history into Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Period. This idea, even if not uniformly, has been maintained to our day (e.g., Gatterer’s 17th-century association on the one hand of the end of antiquity with the downfall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, and on the other of the modern period’s onset with the discovery of America by Columbus in 1492) (Palous^, 1990, p. 12). Historical periods are such times as can be attributed to a certain particular unity separable from those of preceding and subsequent times. Czech author Jir^ina Popelová tried to categorize historical periodization into several types: (1) periodization on a purely chronological basis (millennia, centuries, decades, years, etc.); (2) division into Antiquity, Middle Ages, and Modern Period (i.e., periodization, embracing external and internal aspects); (3) historical periodization based on natural changes or even cosmic influences (concepts such as Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, etc.); (4) periodization concerning civilizational stages (hunting, herding, husbandry, handicraft production, industrial production); (5) periodization of spirituality (Hegel and Comte); (6) periodization in “spirit” but “the soul of an age” expressed in attitudes toward life (e.g., the Soul of a Culture by Spengler); (7) periodization by 1. In Elias’ work is the viewpoint of “temporalized sociology” used primarily as a prerequisite, which is not explicitly discussed much. Although Elias (1992b) devoted to time the separate monograph, he did not deal with this aspect and addressed the problem entirely from the sociology of knowledge point of view.

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significant historical events. Popelová also speaks about delineations within eras, such as cycles of childhood, youth, maturity, old age, and death (Popelová, 1947, pp. 239 246). Attempts to periodize historical time in some way are found not only in historical science but also in sociology, especially with regard to its founders, where there is for example Comte’s division of human development into theological, metaphysical, and positive stages, Spencer’s progression from military to industrial types of society, Durkheim’s differentiation into mechanical and organic solidarities or Tönnies’ dichotomy Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Constructions of this type enable contemporary sociology through terms such as preindustrial (archaic, traditional), industrial (modern, capitalist), and postindustrial society. A significant contribution to analysis of the relationship between time and history was made by French historian Fernand Braudel (1902 1985), primarily known for La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’epoque de Philippe II (1966; Braudel, 1972b). The diversity and inconsistency of times of human life leads to disputation within the humanities, which should recognize and take it into account in its methodology. Braudel views the problem as a historian, addressing it to his “neighbors” in the humanities: economists, ethnographers, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and others. Braudel states that history reveals: (a) the short term — court durée — associated with individual destinies and individual events, (b) cycles such as found in economies, and (c) the (very) long term — longue durée (Braudel, 1972a, pp. 189 215). “Longue durée” alone according to Braudel represents a variable whose exploration can be beneficial to other social sciences. Braudel’s interest is attracted especially by contradictions and tensions between two poles of time, “court durée” and “long durée,” between matters of instant moment (minute detail) and long-term history. Braudel counts “events” as short term (événement), comparing them to explosions (ibid.). The short term is “the most restive” and “deluding” of time spans. For Braudel, this concerns, above all, the work of chroniclers and journalists, who recount the ordinary Soc ieties an d the Pr oce sse s o f C ha nge

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events of daily life (fires, railway accidents, grain prices, crime, theatrical performances) as well as the big events (called historic). All forms of life — in the economy, social sphere, literature, institutions, and religion, even in geography (hurricanes, storms) and politics — are encountered. At first glance, the past may seem like a mass of individual happenings. However, according to Braudel this morass does not represent the whole reality of history, or it would not be possible to tackle reality scientifically. At the end of the 19th century, with the discovery of the importance of authentic documents, a new style of historical research was born, following the history of events step-by-step as it emerged from the correspondence of ambassadors or in parliamentary debates. According to Braudel, this could be termed political history, but not economic or social history, the history of institutions, religions, and civilizations. Thus, in the 20th century a search for new approaches began, for instance evaluating time through economic cycles, a tendency which led beyond usual parameters toward evaluating long time spans. Nevertheless, this did not become the rule; according to Braudel, historians like to be stage managers and are therefore reluctant to give up the drama of short time spans (ibid., p. 194). Analogous to Braudel’s three types of time, there are three different speeds of historical motion (Beart, 1992, p. 42): fast motion relative to the chronology (temps individuel, in: histoire événementielle); slower but still perceptible rhythm, related to changes in the political, cultural, and economic system (temps social, in: histoire conjoncturelle); the nearly imperceptible passage of “geo history,” that is, the history of the relationship between man and his environment (temps géographique, in: histoire structurelle); history as it were almost without repetition and cycles. Braudel himself does not characterize history in terms of individual action or great personalities, because behind the facade of

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these individual actions and decisions, he postulates, lies the much deeper and slower rhythm of longue durée.

History as Life’s Teacher Historia magistra vitae est — history is life’s teacher — Latin scholars used to say.2 Although this statement is still repeated, the question is how relevant it is to the present. It is generally held that one can draw lessons from the past, especially to avoid errors that formerly proved deadly. But on the other hand, it seems that we are not apt to learn, so can only reprise our mistakes. However, the problem is generally more complicated and is not dependent on the willingness and aptitude to learn from history. Some lessons undoubtedly are more durable, but others sooner or later become outdated.3 2. This statement was taken in an abbreviated version from Cicero’s treatise on rhetoric DeOratore, in which he says: Historia est testis temporum, lux veritatis, vita memoria, magistra vitae, nuntia vetustatis — History is the witness of the times, the light of truth, the life of memory, the teacher. 3. In the functioning of historical consciousness and collective memory it is — according to some researchers — more important what the received opinion is on historical events than their interpretation from the historical scientific point of view. We may recall in this context Thomas’ well-known theorem. One of the key theses of symbolic interactionism and interpretive sociology is the definition of the situation, formulated by W. I. Thomas, that if people define a situation as real, it is real in its consequences (Thomas, 1965, p. 114). Interpretive sociology places great emphasis on how people perceive the world around them. What is important is not what reality is, but how actors themselves see and understand it, because they act accordingly, and their conduct produces real consequences. It can often be more important what people think about the past than what it really was, because this image of the past — no matter if partially or even completely false — can be a major motivating force in the present. This is also highlighted by Jan Assmann (1992, p. 50), who emphasizes not factual, but remembered history. In this sense even the myth is real to the extent that it is remembered and celebrated. What is important is its normative and formative power. The national myths created during the rise of nationalism played and still to some extent play an important role. During the 19th and 20th centuries, certain myths became mobilizing forces for some nations and social groups, sometimes lethally so. Many myths even survive in the historical consciousness and collective memory today. Against such historical myths used to be placed historical science. As the highest form of cognitive and theoretical work, based on systematic and rational understanding, science defines myths critically and tries to explore them scientifically, clarifying their origins and the ways they operate. Many

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Systems theory suggests that history as life’s teacher is somewhat problematic, as history has lost its character as a model (Luhmann, 1991, p. 107). Even before Luhmann, Reinhart Koselleck had already pointed out that history can serve as a model for the future only if the two are equivalent (Bergmann, 1983, p. 475). Contemporary society is continually moving away from its past and differentiating itself from it. In such a situation, the simple idea that we should learn from the past is problematic. History has — according to Luhmann — become insufficient, and the focus of attention has shifted to the future, to social planning, as the manifestation of efforts for “defuturizing the future.” The fact that it is ever harder to guess the future arises not from fundamental unpredictability but from the complexity of a world following no plan and constantly accelerating. One of the functions of sociological theory is frequently considered to be the prediction of future conditions and situations. In the early 19th century, Marquis Pierre Simon de Laplace declared that if he knew how the Universe looked at its beginning, and all the laws governing it, he could predict everything in the future. However, in the early 21st century the situation looks somewhat different. A long-held belief in deterministic and irreversible laws was shaken by new discoveries: Newton’s crystal ball of determinism is considerably cracked (Coveney & Highfield, 1990). Naive determinism, assuming that the more we know the more precisely we can predict, has already been abandoned by contemporary science, and thus the possibility of prediction has shrunk. Social movement produces unpredictable changes that are, according to Karl R. Popper (1957), influenced by the growth of our knowledge, a development which cannot be predicted. Popper, a programmatic indeterminist, also convincingly demonstrates

contemporary scholars, however, point out that efforts to define in the spirit of Enlightenment Rationalism the demarcation line between the logo and the myth are not enough, because in history there are no discrete phenomena. After all, even historical science cannot resist some myths, particularly when they become part of state ideology or political parties and from there influence educational and scientific policy.

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that the Laplacian deterministic dream is based on the postulate of a closed future and assumption of symmetry between the past and the future (Popper & Warren, 1982). The social world is, as Miloslav Petrusek has stated, “nomothetic, causal and predictable — that is, relatively strictly deterministic — only in its reproductive dimension” (Petrusek, 1991, p. 699); in addition to reproductive and repetitive activities, there are innately creative acts that cause the emergence of unpredictable change.

Social Change — Different Approaches to its Observation and Analysis Historical sociology is often associated with problems of social change. The introduction of the phrase “social change” into the sociological dictionary is attributed to William F. Ogburn (1964 [1922]) and undoubtedly relates to the effort to substitute “neutral” terms for such controversial concepts as progress, development, or evolution. In contrast to a stable state or continuous flow, social change means dynamics and discontinuity, which may relate to demographic processes, social structures, cultural patterns, societies and their subsystems, organizations, institutions, or groups. Social changes may differ in extent (total partial), importance, depth (deep superficial), duration (long-term shortterm), and speed (fast slow). Theories relating to social change have two main objectives: (a) to describe change theoretically and (b) to explain it. Theoretical description is focused mostly on the expression of the nature and direction of change (what replaces what; what increases or decreases), and its path (linear, cyclical, in jumps). Some of these approaches represent general theories, while in other cases they are special theories.4 Their explanation focuses primarily on the sources of dynamism and innovation, what movers set change in motion and what factors influence its progress. On the topic of social change, a considerable number of book 4. Maureen T. Hallinan distinguishes the theories of global and specific (Hallinan, 1997, pp. 4 5).

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titles have been published,5 in which three basic types of theory are mostly distinguished: the theory of historical cycles, historical materialism, and evolutionism (the author of one of the most famous works on this subject is Piotr Sztompka, 1993). Maureen T. Hallinan asks the provocative question of whether it is even possible to develop a theory of social change, and she mentions three related arguments (Hallinan, 1997, p. 3). The first comes from historical relativists who declare that conclusions from a particular historical event cannot be applied to explanations of other specific events because they never happen under identical conditions. The second argues that each social change is such a complex phenomenon that it is virtually impossible to take into account all influences on its causes and course. The third asserts that relevant theory cannot be directly derived from the facts with which historical science works, and moreover, it is always the result of a certain intellectual imagination. It can be seen that the arguments against theorizing about social change come mainly from the historical sciences. By contrast, sociology even at its beginnings mostly regarded the historical view as narrow, limited to description, and lacking in the effort of generalization. Auguste Comte developed his theoretical considerations in the context of social dynamics, while Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer, Ferdinand Tönnies, and Émile Durkheim dealt with issues of historical stages; the social mechanism that leads to change was considered by Max Weber and Vilfredo Pareto. The theory of progress still prevailed in the thinking of many social scientists of that time (but not all), and also the idea that history is not just some random sequence of events, but that there are laws of historical development (Karl R. Popper, 1957 later criticized this as “historicism”). Hallinan notes that early theories of social change prioritized simplicity and concentrated on one factor or on a very small 5. As an example can be mentioned works by Boudon (1986), Fals Borda (1985), Haferkamp and Smelser (1992), Harper and Leicht (2007), Mendras (1983), Moore (1967), Müller and Schmidt (1995), Nisbet (1969, 1972), Schneider (1976), Smith (1976), Turchin (2003), and Vago (2004).

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number of factors as trigger elements (Hallinan, 1997, p. 4). The speculative nature of the theories of social development which emerged in the late 19th and at the beginning of the 20th centuries undoubtedly significantly influenced the noticeable shift in sociological thought away from long-term studies of social dynamics (though this was not absolute as Pitirim A. Sorokin demonstrated). In sociology, the tendency emerged to elaborate models of society in an idle state and to focus on data about the present, which led to Elias’s comment on “the retreat of sociologists into the present.” Widespread recognition of the two-volume work of Elias, Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation (Elias, 1994 [1939]), created before World War II, occurred only in the 1970s. Some credit for the restoration of the theme of social change within sociology belongs to Talcott Parsons and the scholars of his circle. After World War II, Parsons developed the concept of modernization, in the 1960s combined with the theory of social evolution (Parsons, 1966, 1971). Historical comparative sociology also emerged at this time, represented first by Barrington Moore and later by Charles Tilly, Theda Skocpol, Michael Mann, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt. Although the topic of social dynamics and change has been coming and going in the history of sociological thinking — we can say that in terms of interpretative principles several types can be distinguished. Cyclical theories, assuming that social change follows a circular pattern, are one. A second type emphasizes discontinuity, that is, revolutionary jumps or breaks. A third type is theories of linear, continuous development, largely (but not only) associated with the idea of evolution. In addition to these three basic types, there are specific theories, relating to, inter alia, the problems of bifurcation, acceleration, crisis, or collapse. This typology has shortcomings as well as advantages. One advantage is undoubtedly that it navigates through the labyrinth of sociological theories of social change and brings order to it. One limitation, however, is that some particular theories cannot simply be included because they contain elements of more than one type. Soc ieties an d the Pr oce sse s o f C ha nge

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The Theories of Cyclical Development The theory of cyclical development and change is developed in two basic versions. The first looks at history in a monistic way, assuming a single stream, internally divided into recurring periods. The second sees history pluralistically — not as uniform, but composed of durations of individual, different, cultures, or civilizations, each passing through its own development, forming a cycle from birth, through maturity, to decline and termination. The first variant may be seen in the theory of the cycle of elites by Italian sociologist Vilfredo Pareto or in the concept of cultural super-systems, formulated by Pitirim A. Sorokin. The second can be found in the work by the German philosopher Oswald Spengler and especially the monumental 12-volume A Study of History by British historian Arnold J. Toynbee. V. Pareto uses the notion of the circulation of elites to describe the succession of groups that occupy governing positions in society. He considers this to be an inevitable phenomenon (Pareto, 1968, p. 36); history according to Pareto is nothing but a graveyard of aristocracies, elites replaced by elites. There are several reasons for this rotation. One is that a large part of the aristocracy dies in battle. Another is that in generational replacement members of the aristocracy lose their vitality and ability to use the force needed to defend privileged positions. However, the main reason for the circulation of elites is the perennial situation of bankruptcy, in which individuals forming the elite lose the capacity to maintain their ruling positions, while in the controlled masses there are those with the ambition and ability to be accommodated into elite positions. Pareto — inspired by Machiavelli — distinguishes two types of elites, Foxes and Lions, which alternate in power (Endruweit, 1986, p. 232). Foxes become the elite in the evolutionary stage of development, as by being cunning they gradually penetrate into leadership positions. Lions become the elite in the revolutionary stage of development, when they get to the top of the social hierarchy by use of force. These two development phases — evolutionary and revolutionary — are cyclically repeated in historical development.

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P. A. Sorokin (1937 1941) in his work Social and Cultural Dynamics distinguishes three general types of culture, which he calls cultural super-systems. Each is internally divided into five main subsystems: language, religion, ethics, science, and fine arts. The first type is Ideational culture, the second Sensate culture, and the third Idealistic culture. Ideational culture has a spiritual nature and its highest value is grounded in God. The primary cultural needs of the people are spiritually oriented. Sensate culture has a materialistic character. It puts emphasis on material needs, satisfied by transforming the outside world and nature. Idealistic culture is multidimensional and represents a synthesis of ideational and sensate culture. It is a culture in which spiritual and material needs both have their place and therefore it develops not only on spiritual but also material levels. Sorokin considers the alternation of these three types of culture the most general expression of historical development. It must be emphasized that according to Sorokin this rotation neither has legitimate order nor is historically binding. Fluctuation is not rhythmic, moreover, and the duration of each type of culture may be very different. Alternation of cultures according to Sorokin. Period

Dominant Culture

Greece, 8th 6th century BC

Ideational

Greece, 5th century BC

Idealistic

Rome, 4th century BC 4th century AC

Sensate

Europe, 4th 6th century AC

Idealistic

Europe, 6th 12th century

Ideational

Europe, 12th 14th century

Idealistic

Europe, 14th century present

Sensate

Note: Adapted from Sorokin (1937, p. 153).

Influenced by Nietzsche’s notion of eternal recurrence and the return of the same, history according to O. Spengler does not run Soc ieties an d the Pr oce sse s o f C ha nge

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straight to a goal, but comprises the durations of individual cultures, each of which is cyclic in its appearance and disappearance, like the birth and perishing of organisms. Spengler posits a kind of hidden “morphology” of human history, based on the fact that the existence of all cultures — despite undeniable diversity and differences in phenomena — is subject to the same evolutionary pattern that leads from birth and youth to maturity, old age, and death. In the development of individual cultures (or rather societies), Spengler distinguishes the youth of the culture in the strict sense of the word, and old age (the decadent period), which he terms “civilization.” In his book The Decline of the West, O. Spengler (1991 [1918 1923]) talks about the Indian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Ancient, Chinese, Central American, Arabian, and Western (European) cultures. Western culture according to Spengler had entered into the stage of civilization and so by the inevitability of repeating cycles was predestined to decline. In the German thinking of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the concept of culture was emphasized against the concept of civilization, with culture considered important, valuable, and authentic, while civilization was artificial, affected, decadent, and inauthentic. Culture was thus a core term for Spengler. By contrast, British thinking at the time proceeded from other assumptions in which tradition played a key role. British historian A. Toynbee considered civilizations the main subject of the study of history, and he approached history not as a single course of human evolution, but as a series of separate civilizations. His major work A Study of History (Toynbee, 1934 1961) ran to 12 volumes and more than 6000 pages including 21 major historical civilizations (in alphabetical order): Andean, Arabic, Babylonian, Chinese, the Far East — its cradle, the Far East in Korea and Japan, Egyptian, Hellenic, Hindu, Hittite, Indian, Iranian, Mayan, Mexican, Minoan, the Orthodox-Christian — its cradle, the Orthodox-Christian in Russia, Sumerian, Syrian, Yucatan, and Western. Each of these civilizations was unusual and unique but reflected a kind of dynamic pattern: genesis, growth, peak, and disintegration. World history then was split into a series of self-contained cycles occurring at given places and times.

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As far as the contributions of contemporary authors are concerned, the study of the long-term historical cycles by Joshua S. Goldstein (1988) is counted as a cyclic approach (Vester, 1995, pp. 129 145) and picks up the idea of the holder of world power; another work of note is Paul Kennedy’s (1987) study of the rise and fall of the great powers. However, both works deal not with pure cyclicity, but cyclicity in combination with linearity (or with evolution). The development models proposed take the form of wave oscillations, with long cycles of alternating rises and falls (booms and crises) occurring over centuries of historical development.6 Kennedy (ibid.) tracks changes in the global economic balance of power, running from the beginning of the 16th century to the present. In assessing the transition from imperial domination to mutual relations of economic development, via ongoing wars and power struggles, he not only monitors the progress of hegemonic cycles but also how the hegemonic role in the international system shifted (the Netherlands in the 17th century, Britain in the 19th century, and the United States in the 20th century). J. S. Goldstein, meanwhile, focuses on the development of the economic and political core of the world system in the last 500 years. He distinguishes economic long waves of about 50 years in duration and cycles of hegemony and hegemonic wars with lengths of about 150 years. He observes that between the years 1495 and 1945 nine economic cycles and three hegemonic cycles took place (Goldstein, 1988, pp. 7 8). These cycles were not fixed or mechanical in nature, but unfolded by irregular evolution through time. Although knowledge of them does not predict future developments, it helps in understanding the dynamics of international politics in a deeper context. 6. The inspiration for these approaches was economist Nikolai D. Kondratiev, who before World War II identified long waves of economic cycles in the capitalist economy (Kondratiev’s long waves or cycles) that take about 50 60 years. After World War II, the French historian Fernand Braudel developed a conception of long duration (longue durée) history that is rhythmized by business and other cycles (booms). Later sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein used all this in his concept of development of the world system, based on Marxism. Goldstein refers to Wallerstein, but tries to distance his work from him.

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Theories of Developmental Discontinuity and Breaks Historical evolution involves discontinuities and breaks that disrupt its flow and cause social reality to stick at certain historical moments, but then as though by a leap to reach another (usually assumed higher) level. In the literature, this way of thinking is accorded a number of attributes from dialectical to conflictualistic. Historical materialism and its various offshoots play an important role,7 and the concept of revolution is one of the key notions. Interest in the theme of revolutions can be found in representatives of different ideological streams, especially among political scientists, and not just in Marxism.

The Materialist Conception of History Marx developed the materialist conception of history, known as historical materialism (most notably in Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy from 1859; Marx, 1968, pp. 334 338), as changing socio-economic formations whose nature is determined by modes of production. The production mode Marx understands as a dialectical unity of production forces (i.e., the technological character of production) and production relations (i.e., primarily class relations). For each socio-economic formation, the existence of two antagonistic classes is characteristic, whose dialectical relationship (they determine each other, but meantime generate an insurmountable antagonism) represents the fundamental class conflict within society. The dynamics of historical development in Marx’s conception of history are

7. Some authors (e.g., Giddens) point out that Marx’s conception of history is not so far away from the concept of continuous linear development assumed by evolutionism. Marx’s theory, like classical evolutionism, concerns upward development (the idea of progress). Moreover, for Marx — like Darwin — this development was connected with struggle (according to Marx the class struggle; according to Darwin the struggle for survival). The difference is mainly that evolutionism has a tendency to think of a smooth, continuous course of change, while according to Marx, developmental continuity is interrupted by certain qualitative leaps of a revolutionary character.

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dialectical, which means there is an inconsistent relationship between production forces and production relations. Marx concludes that the productive forces and relations of production within each socio-economic formation reciprocally constitute each other, although their relationship is not fixed but evolves and eventually reaches an unresolvable contradiction with the existing relations of production (class relations become a brake for the further development of productive forces), which must be overcome by revolutionary means (such as by a revolutionary leap or change in the quality of social organization). The essential clash takes place at the social base, however, which sooner or later brings about a change in the social superstructure. The collective body of this revolutionary change is the social class which has an objective interest in the changing of production relations and development of production forces. Marx’s ideas were influenced by the theory of progress in the Enlightenment. He saw the course of history as inevitable, not due to any “iron” laws but rather due to unrealized trends that depend for realization on the activities of collective social subjects, otherwise known as social classes. Marx’s thinking has exercised considerable influence on the thinking of many Western intellectuals. Notable examples include the British Marxist historians (Eric Hobsbawm, Edward P. Thompson, Perry Anderson, and others), the theorists of the world system (Immanuel Wallerstein, Andre Gunder Frank, Christopher Chase-Dunn), and some representatives of historical sociology (Barrington Moore, Theda Skocpol, and others). The theorizing of later authors who represent this perspective, however, has lost much of its orthodoxy. An example is the theory of the world system developed by Immanuel Wallerstein based on two sources of inspiration: neo-Marxism allied to dependency theory, and Fernand Braudel’s concept of historical science. Wallerstein (1974, 1980, 1989, 2011) characterizes the world system as a regional system interconnected by economic ties. Distinguished by inequality and exploitation, this system entails an economic exchange between the rich, so-called developed countries of the core, and the poor, underdeveloped countries of the periphery and semiperiphery. The system evolved from the 15th century to the present Soc ieties an d the Pr oce sse s o f C ha nge

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in cyclical phases, in which periods of growth alternated with periods of decay. Thus Marx’s idea of dialectical antagonisms was eclipsed in Wallerstein’s work and replaced by an emphasis on the monitoring of long-term development cycles.

Revolution In the Marxist conception, revolution is not just a change, but change of fundamental nature, change in the essence of things, that is, in the case of a society a reversal of social orders. Thus understood, revolution is generally associated with a number of attributes and characteristics, such as (a) participation of mass social movements; (b) revolutionary ideology in which targets are to be achieved; (c) leaders of revolution; (d) the power of violence, often used or merely threatened; (e) not just any circumstances, but a so-called revolutionary situation, characterized by escalation of social conflicts or problems; (f) progression, which leads to oneoff revolutionary acts, such as for instance a change of government, but also some gradual, longer lasting transformations in the areas of politics, economy, law, culture, or religion. Revolution — sometimes easily and sometimes less so — can thus be distinguished from other similar processes such as people’s uprisings, revolts, coups, conspiracies, reforms, restorations, or counter-revolutions. Revolution is spoken of mostly in terms of social power, but sometimes applied to other areas, for instance in milestones in the global history of humanity (the Neolithic, industrial, or information revolutions). There are also revolutions in science, arts, technology, or medical treatments. Marxism focuses attention primarily on so-called bourgeois revolutions (the French Revolution of 1789 or Russian Revolution of 1917), but the term has been associated with historical periods (the Hussite revolution, the Dutch Revolt) or with other types of historical change (colonial revolutions, velvet revolutions, Arab revolutions). We can also distinguish revolutions “from below,” where hegemony is exercised by masses (the bourgeoisie, peasantry, and proletariat) from revolutions “from above,” carried out by an “enlightened” ruling elite.

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There is a very large and varied range of literature on revolutions, formulated from diverse ideological positions, conservative, liberal, and socialist. The topic of revolutions has occupied many researchers in historical sociology, some already mentioned, others still to be discussed, including: Pitirim A. Sorokin (1925), Barrington Moore (1966), Theda Skocpol (1979), Charles Tilly (1978), Jaroslav Krejc^í (1983), John Foran (1997), Michael D. Richards (2004), Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt (2006a), and many others.

Collective Actors of Social Change Marx’s thinking rests on a historical collective entity to perform social change through revolutionary action. The issue of a collective actor to change social reality is characteristic not only of Marxism but also of theories of social conflict and social movements, for instance Ralf Dahrendorf’s concept of social conflict, formulated largely in opposition to Marx but bearing noticeable signs of Marxist inspiration in the formation of collective actors of social conflict. The development of conflict from a structural starting position to a developed social conflict runs through three stages according to Dahrendorf: (a) structuring of the initial situation, (b) realization of latent interests, (c) creation of conflicts (Dahrendorf, 1963a, pp. 179 189). The basic conditions for conflict are laid down in the first stage. Sharers of latent interests still do not create a social group in the true sense, but quasi-groups,8 that is, aggregates of people not yet aware of common interests. Members may not be organized and may not even know about one another. Their similar positions in society nevertheless predetermine them to associating and launching joint action. The second phase consists of crystallization, or the emergence of latent interests and organization of quasi-groups into actual groupings, that is, interest groups. Whether quasi-groups become real interest groups, and thus collectives capable of action, 8. Quasi-groups are in this sense similar to Marx’s concept of “class by themselves.”

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depends on awareness of latent interests.9 The articulation of (latently predefined) interests can only be successful if certain conditions are met, including social conditions (the possibility of communication between members, ways of recruiting supporters), the development of a program with common standards, the establishment of a managing core, material, and technical security, and last but not least, the right political conditions (especially freedom of association). If these are not present, conflict may appear but cannot go beyond the stage of latency (latent existing conflict is not necessarily manifested). The third stage concerns conflicts themselves. These conflicts may manifest themselves very differently; in the form of public debate, go-slows, disobedience, demonstrations, strikes, armed conflict, and many others. Dahrendorf considers variations of conflict in terms of two dimensions: “intensity” and “violence” (not every intensive conflict is necessarily violent, and vice versa) (ibid., pp. 210 213). The dimension of violence applies to expressive forms of conflict. This dimension can be seen as belonging to a scale on which at one pole we find war frenzy and military coups, while at the other there is polite discussion and negotiation. Between these two extremes lies a spectrum of more or less violent forms represented by civil disobedience, ultimatums, accusations, quarrels, etc. Intensity signifies the social relevance of the conflict, determined by the extent to which participants are drawn in, by the degree of their involvement, and the energy that they invest. Intensity is substantial if the participants depend on the outcome of the conflict and the cost of defeat is high. The more importance participants attach to the conflict, the more intense it is.

The Theory of Breaks The notion of historical discontinuity can be found in poststructuralism as well as the theory of structuration. Michel Foucault uses the concepts introduced by the French historians of science 9. Conversion of quasi-groups into interest groups recalls Marx’s anticipated transformation of: “class by itself” into a “class for itself.”

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(Bachelard, Canguilhem), who, against the concept of history as continuous, emphasized discontinuity and ruptures separating and distinguishing different scientific epochs (Baert, 1998, p. 120). Foucault places this “new history” in opposition to previous efforts to eliminate discontinuity and force history into a mold of narrative continuity. In the old type of history, discontinuity caused embarrassment because it was understood as a sign of professional incompetence. In the new type of history with which Foucault identifies, discontinuity is not a bug but a feature. Foucault associates the application of structuralism with the concept of discontinuity, through which his archaeological method points to two objectives: the search for latent structures which are relatively stable for long periods and the hunt for the radical breaks that interrupt such relative stability. Foucault’s view of history suggests enduring periods of dominant structures and practices. These periods are separated by relatively short intervals (perhaps several decades), in which the transfer from the old structure to a new one takes place. In Foucault’s concept of history, we encounter two rhythms (ibid., p. 121): the first represents the very slow rhythm of longue durée (a noticeable legacy from the Annales School). The second is the accelerated rhythm of ruptures (reflected in the history of science). Let us add that Foucault focused mainly on showing how particular periods differ from each other and how at the same time they contrast with the present; he did not make much effort to explain how the breaks between individual periods occur. The approach to history found in Anthony Giddens in many ways resembles Foucault. Giddens characterizes his approach as antievolutionistic; the concept of evolution is replaced by the notion of episode, and all social life has an episodic character. The expression “episodic” is applicable to a whole range of social activities: when we characterize a certain aspect of social life as an episode, it can be seen as a series of acts or events of identifiable beginning and end, representing a particular sequence. Giddens views history as an episodic development, which means a series of “large-scale episodes” — long-lasting sequences — separated Soc ieties an d the Pr oce sse s o f C ha nge

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by changes to the dominant institutions or societies themselves. Alongside this, he formulates the idea of the existence of “critical thresholds,” change-boundaries of transition between overall societal types (Giddens, 1984, p. 244 ff.). Giddens’ inspiration for the formulation of a nonevolutionistic classification of time-space structured societal types is found in Marx, in his notion of social formation, but he refuses to accept Marx’s concept of development. Hans-Peter Müller in this context speaks of Giddens’ “deconstruction” of historical materialism, focused on replacing Marx’s dialectic of productive forces and relations of production with the logic of time-space, which leads to a nonevolutionistic concept of social formation (Müller, 1992, p. 190). Societal types (social formations) according to Giddens can be defined using time-space structuring principles, in particular: (a) tribal communities, (b) class-divided societies, (c) a class society (capitalism) (Giddens, 1984, pp. 180 185). All societies, whether small or large, or seemingly isolated, exist in free connection with other societies. The next logical step in Giddens’ thinking therefore is to explain the current coexistence of different social formations. He works with the concept of four intersocietal systems (ibid., pp. 184 185), producing and reproducing global historical scenarios based on the time-space coexistence of different social formations in specific historical forms. These are: (a) prehistoric systems (tribal communities), (b) empires (class-divided societies + tribal communities), (c) the early capitalist world economy (class society + class-divided societies + tribal communities), (d) the present capitalist world economy (capitalist societies + state-socialist societies + developing countries + class-divided societies + tribal communities). History according to Giddens has no continuity but on the contrary is contingent and episodic, leading to the time-space coexistence of different types of social formations. Giddens connects the coexistence of and contact between different social formations with the notion of a “time-space edge,” by which he expresses the conflicting or symbiotic nature of the relationship between societies of different structural types.

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The Theory of Linear Continuous Development In theories that emphasize the continuous linear flow of history, change is usually seen as a result of shifts that gradually lead to an increase or decline in a particular field or monitored parameter. Theories of this type in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century accepted that human history was on a path of progress.10 The original theory of evolution in the 19th century was complementary to this idea. Today, influenced by postmodern skepticism, theorists have deserted the idea of universal progress, which was combined in the field of social science of the 19th century with the belief in the possibility of universal laws of historical development. Present-day theorists usually recoil from this idea.

Sequential and Processual Explanatory Models It was Max Weber who connected history and sociology, and Jürgen Ritsert (2000, pp. 126 129) compares Weber’s concept of social change as a “sequential model” with his view of history as an endless, largely unplanned stream of events (Weber, 1922, p. 184), observing that the analogy of flow or current is also characteristic of the sequential model. Historical events consist of an infinite sequence of individual events embedded in a stream and carried along by it. This image suggests constant change; history is infinitely varied — from both macro and micro points of view — and therefore no chronicler can accurately and adequately capture everything. The historian selects from the mass of events what is substantial and worthy of recognition and elaborates this with the means at his disposal. Weber emphasizes the unintentional nature of the course of world history. According to him, it has no definite and inevitable culmination. Weber thus rejects the teleological conception of history, asserting that historical research cannot provide a normative goal and give reasons for it by analysis. While Weber

10. A more detailed explanation of the evolution of the theory of progress is found in books by Nisbet (1980) and Bedr^ich Loewenstein (2009).

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is also a critic of the idea of progress he does not condemn the idea of growth (e.g., the growth of rationality). As a structuring principle of historical events, he recognizes causality, which means the relation of cause and effect, but even so he is aware that questioning causes can lead to endless analysis of effects. Norbert Elias followed up the Weberian conception of history in his own ways. A characteristic feature of Elias’s sociological thinking is processuality.11 He emphasizes the need to construct a theory of social processes to diagnose and explain trends in social and personality structures (Elias, 1977, p. 127 ff.). Elias’s scholarly interest is attracted by the processes of continuous, longterm change, which are purposeless and unforeseen. He talks about their direction and shifts from one processual stage to another, noting the significance of the fact that they are bipolar. The conceptual tools Elias proposes for their analysis are likewise conceptual pairs such as integration and disintegration, or rise and fall. Another specific feature is persistence, with directions which may be followed for centuries (though unlike the biological process of evolution they can also move in the opposite direction). Shifts of different kinds and intensities can occur simultaneously, while changes in one direction can also generate counter-trends; the predominant process of integration can be accompanied by partial disintegration, or on the contrary the dominant process of disintegration can lead to a new type of reintegration. Even if social development has a certain direction, it does not necessarily apply always and under all circumstances. According to Elias, in evolutionary dynamics it is appropriate to talk not of necessity, but possibilities and probabilities of various degrees (Elias 2012 [1978]). The idea that long-term development in the past automatically implies durability in the future is false. Elias considers the idea of universal progress a myth.

11. Schützeichel and Jordan (2015) argue that the term process and associated processual approaches have seen a certain boom in scholarly works in recent times.

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Evolutionary Theory The origins of evolutionary theory in the 18th and 19th centuries are associated with the names of Kant, Lamarck, and Darwin. The evolutionary approach to the problem of change, both in the biological and social areas, works on the assumption that development takes place in the direction of increasing complexity, which means a shift from simple, nonspecialized forms of life to more complex forms. This trend is associated with the concept of differentiation, which indicates that system structures, from the functional point of view, are ever more internally differentiated through the principle of division of labor. At the same time, it is also expected that more complex systems have a greater ability than simpler ones to adapt to their environment and to survive. In the context of sociological thinking, we can distinguish classical evolutionism, represented by Herbert Spencer and Émile Durkheim, from neo-evolutionism, developed especially in the context of structural functionalism and systems theory (Neil Smelser, Talcott Parsons, Niklas Luhmann, and also Jürgen Habermas, 1981).12 Evolutionism in sociology is often associated with the concept of modernization theory. H. Spencer was a proponent of evolutionary theory even before Darwin. His ideas presume an analogy between biological and social organisms. The gradual deepening of internal differentiation is characteristic for the evolution of social organisms (Spencer, 1966a, pp. 265 290, 1966c, pp. 3 7), and he speaks of societies as simple, compound, double, and triple compound (Spencer, 1966b, pp. 537 563); the term “composition,” meanwhile, he uses to signify the level of social differentiation and complexity. E. Durkheim (1964 [1893]) is known especially for his characterization of two evolutionary types of society: societies with mechanical and societies with organic, solidarity. In the first case, units of social coexistence represent small parts — segments — with a low degree of interdependence and underdeveloped division of labor. 12. Among the contemporary authors oriented on issues of social evolution rank also, for example, Frank (1998) or Chirot (1994).

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Their cohesion is based primarily on shared religious faith. Through evolutionary development the boundaries of the local segments break, and the density of population and the size of social units increase. Meanwhile, internal differentiation is deepening and culminates in a society of organic cooperative solidarity with increased division of labor as a major integrating force. Another picture of evolution is presented by the American sociologist N. Smelser in his study of the industrial revolution, and this appears close to the theory of conflict. This explanatory model includes seven degrees (Smelser, 1959, p. 402), starting with the dissatisfaction of actors with aspects of the functioning of the social system (the first step). The response to this is fear and aggression which creates tension, discharged in conflicts and social upheavals (the second step). The next (third) step is associated with the attempt to control these conflicts and resolve them. If this fails, there is a search for and development of new approaches to solving the given problem (the fourth step); such approaches are gradually defined (the fifth phase), gain a binding nature (the sixth phase), and are recognized as institutionalized and routine (the seventh phase). After all these steps, a new social unity is created, differentiated from the functional point of view and more efficient. In the context of American and world sociology, two books by T. Parsons, Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives (Parsons, 1966) and The System of Modern Societies (Parsons, 1971), provided significant contributions to the modern development of evolutionary sociological concepts. Parsons introduces the paradigm of evolutionary change based on the adaptive capacity of the system leading to increasing differentiation, on the assumption of the existence of evolutionary universals. By this Parsons understands such phenomena or inventions so important for survival and development that they appear not just in one place, but in many across the globe, even under radically different conditions. The basic evolutionary universals are language, religion, kinship, and technology, and a key prerequisite for all human culture and interpersonal communication is language, so this is the first and the most important evolutionary universal. There is no human

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society without language. From the perspective of functional differentiation, the author distinguishes three stages in the development of society: primitive, transitional, and modern (Parsons, 1966). Whereas Smelser’s interpretation of change assumes that the mover of the whole process — at all stages — is the social actors, approaches oriented toward social systems adhere to the logic of systems. Typical in this respect is N. Luhmann, who adopts the idea of evolutionary development from Parsons, but explores this problem from the perspective of the autonomization of partial social systems, rather than integration mechanisms; for him the crucial issue is not maintaining the structure, but how changes in structural formulas occur. In Luhmann’s concept, evolutionary development is explained solely on the basis of three mechanisms — variation, selection, and stabilization (Luhmann, 1991, p. 151). Variety means an abundance of experience and conduct; selection is the choice of available alternatives, while stabilization is the maintenance of what results. If such abundance did not exist, there would be no selection of those ways regarded as useful, or rejection of the superfluous. In stabilization, the selected options are retained as patterns for solving problems and for further reproduction. Luhmann applies evolutionary theory to the interpretation of structural changes in past societies and even present ones. The growth of complexity and functional differentiation of society are for him essential characteristics of social development from archaic societies up to modern times. Luhmann constructs a three-category typology of evolutionary structural differentiation through which societies deal with growing complexity (of the environment, and also themselves). For archaic societies segmental differentiation is characteristic, while later society is differentiated stratificationally (hierarchically), and modern society functionally. Evolution here is blind in its orientation toward the future, not a process in which the best of all possible worlds break through and in which admirable things survive. In earlier concepts of evolutionary theory, the majority view was that evolution is an inevitable process of change, often associated with the concept of civilizational growth, social progress, increasing humanity, etc. Soc ieties an d the Pr oce sse s o f C ha nge

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This vision, in the contemporary version of evolutionary theory, is abandoned. The modern evolutionary concept, according to Luhmann, should focus on the theoretical description of real changes. Evolution is not seen as an inevitable process of change and cannot be reduced to the consequence of struggle, adaptation, or customization. For evolution the future is open; evolutionary development is not deterministically defined and contingency plays an important role.

Some New Approaches to the Issue of Social Change Sociology today has reached a situation that calls for new approaches to theories of social change. The contemporary social sciences are thus in a process of searching and inspiration is sought beyond the traditional domain of sociology in such increasingly popular concepts as complexity, bifurcation, acceleration, turbulence, chaos, crisis, disaster, or collapse. The level of solution offered by contemporary concepts of social change reflects the general state of sociological theory, which is to say a certain stagnation. A small minority of social scientists today pin their hopes on chaos theory. Contemporary science has discovered that many natural as well as artificially made systems behave chaotically: in the changing weather, the flow of rivers, population growth, traffic, or even the stock prices of securities. It turns out that if some complex systems are characterized by simple behavior, by contrast some simple systems can behave intricately (Gleick, 1987). The path which leads to chaotic behavior is usually illustrated by means of a bifurcation diagram (bifurcation means branching), where each new branch stands for a new option. Each point of branching is called a critical point. For each critical point the system can take a new possible state. Close to this imaginary tree trunk of bifurcation the system has the option to take only a few possible states. With an increasing number of branches the possibilities multiply until they reach a blurred zone of chaos high in the foliage (Coveney & Hihfield, 1990). This situation, in which the system has a choice from a plethora of options, leads to the commencement of unpredictable behavior known as deterministic

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chaos. In contemporary chaos theory (Gleick, 1987; Prigogine & Stengers, 1984), chaotic development is viewed not as a complete distortion of order, but a special form of it: an order with infinite complexity. In the 1980s and 1990s, many social scientists turned their attention to the phenomenon of acceleration, associated with the very dynamic development at that time in the field of computing and communications. Even in the late 1970s, the French theorist Paul Virilio came up with the idea of a new research direction termed “dromology” (from the Greek dromos — race), which examined how societies were profiled and structured in relation to speed and ability to make use of speed, identifying this as a key to wealth and political power (Virilio, 1980). Today “social acceleration” is observed in the field of technology, in the social sphere, in the acceleration of social change, in the increasing pace of life, in the acceleration of processes in the economy, military, and global communications (Rosa, 2005). Anthony Giddens (1990) in this context even declares that modernity leads to the transformation of time and space, the result of which is today’s “time-space compression.” Some concerns, in some cases even of apocalyptic proportions, are reflected in concepts which feature the terms “crisis,” “catastrophe,” and “collapse” (see the next chapter). All these, and also the aforementioned approaches to the issue of social change, indicate that this is a topic in which interdisciplinarity appears desirable. The theme of social change clearly demonstrates the broad areas of research in which sociology addresses and connects with other humanistic and natural scientific disciplines to encourage and inspire new ways of solving theoretical and methodological problems. In such approaches which try to understand social change, we find not only insights into previous and current problems but also efforts to anticipate emerging problems, threats, and risks.

Crisis as a Challenge It is usually stated that sociology was born in a situation of social crisis associated with the transition to modern society. Mankind Soc ieties an d the Pr oce sse s o f C ha nge

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has undergone a series of crises during the 20th century, and crisis is one of the important concepts of historical sociology. In the introduction to the book, The crisis of our age, the author Pitirim A. Sorokin declares that a significant portion of the life, organization, and culture of Western society is in severe crisis; its body and spirit are ill and hardly anywhere is it healthy (Sorokin, 1946). Sorokin certainly was not the only one to understand his present as a crisis. T. G. Masaryk wrote about many aspects of “crisis” in the late 19th century; Georg Simmel (1983) meanwhile dealt with the crisis of culture at the beginning of the 20th century; Sigmund Freud warned about the hazardous potential of human destructiveness, while Oswald Spengler announced The Decline of the West (Spengler 1991 [1918 1923]) and Joseph Alois Schumpeter claimed that the cyclic effects of economic crises13 are to the economy as a heartbeat is to a living organism. As Adolf Hitler consolidated his power, Edmund Husserl (1970 [1936]) was lecturing about the “crisis of European sciences” and Georges Friedmann (1936) was warning on the “crisis of progress.” The topic of crises maintained its relevance in the context of social sciences after the Second World War, when the matter of political and international crises became a frequent topic. From the 1970s, energy (oil shock) and ecological crises were hot topics. The end of the 1980s brought the collapse of the socialist system, and the commencement of postmodernism accentuated the theme of identity crisis. Moreover, warnings and jeremiads have been amplified in concepts rapidly becoming part of the theoretical toolkit of social scientists around the world, through such terms as risk, catastrophe, and collapse.

Etymology and Semantics of the Concept of Crisis The concept of crisis originated in Greek, derived from the verb krino, to decide between two opposites, life and death, success and failure (Koselleck, 2006, p. 203). The word krisis indicates a severe 13. The existence of economic cycles was noted and described in the 1960s by the French economist Clement Juglar.

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decisive moment in which decisions of great consequence are made; it is a moment in which people feel uncertainty, confusion, and distress. Credit for the spread of the term crisis is mainly due to Hippocratic medicine, where this term referred to a brief period during a disease in which the patient’s survival or death was determined. It was Thucydides who then used it to describe political situations and conflicts (Prisching, 1986, p. 19; Koselleck, 2006, p. 204), and it became one of the basic components of drama or literary works, where a story culminates; in classical drama, it may represent the peak of clashing trajectories. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the concept of crisis extended its meaning to a hard decisive moment in politics and war. According to Koselleck, as early as the French Revolution it had become a central interpretative tool for political as well as social history and ranked among the basic historical concepts (ibid., p. 206). In the 19th century, the expression “economic crisis” emerged, indicating a substantial deterioration in the state of the economy. Koselleck, who was interested in crisis as a fundamental concept to understand history, outlines three semantic models in which the concept has appeared (ibid., pp. 207 213). He describes the first model through Schiller’s statement: “World history is the judgement of the world,” expressing in “a sort of immanent form, as if the last judgement were ongoing permanently” (ibid., p. 208). In this sense, history is viewed as an ongoing continual crisis. The very concept of crisis becomes a processional category, a stable, permanent feature of human history. In the second model, crisis is associated with the crossing of boundaries between different eras, with a tumultuous transition from one period to another. This is an iterative interpretation, in which crises in history appear periodically as some kind of “dynamo” of development or progress. Crisis in this case is understood as a one-time, accelerating process, in which a new situation is born and emerges from the destruction of the existing system. The historian Jacob Burckhardt (1979 [1905]) used this concept to consider the issue of historical crises in the 19th century. In the third variant, crisis is understood as a final crisis of history, metaphorically put as a kind of “Last Trial” or “Grande Soc ieties an d the Pr oce sse s o f C ha nge

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Crise Finale” (Koselleck, 2006, p. 212). Koselleck notes that in this case crisis is — in contrast to the aforementioned concepts a concept of “pure future,” associated with a certain anticipated “final decision,” after which history will look completely different. While utopian in the 19th century, with the present devices of self-destruction this has every chance of becoming real (Koselleck, 1986, p. 68 ff.).

Risk, Crisis, Catastrophe, and Collapse In today’s social sciences, crisis is associated with the concepts of risk, catastrophe, and collapse. These terms very often serve to express concerns that tend toward the apocalyptic. Risks are usually associated with prevention; catastrophe or collapse on the contrary with the consequences of unheeded risk. Crisis is therefore seen as something directly preceding catastrophe or collapse, which induces and causes them. Catastrophe and collapse are understood as the final stages of a crisis, as the negative culmination of crisis development. Catastrophe can in principle be understood as a synonym of collapse, or rather, collapse can be considered a catastrophe of a totally devastating nature. The concept of risk was popularized from the 1980s and gained broader awareness thanks especially to Ulrich Beck (1992), who asserted that modern industrial society produces, as an unintended consequence of economic growth and technological development, risks which exceed tolerability and resemble self-destructive gambling. The society which creates dangers and risks on such a large scale he called risk society. Anthony Giddens (2000, pp. 38 53) notes that the concept of risk has its origins in the insurance system in relation to the dangerous maritime voyages of the 16th and 17th centuries. Losses were the potential risk — something that could happen, but wouldn’t necessarily — associated with overcoming considerable spatial distances in flimsy vessels. It was later applied to banking operations and investment activities related to the timing and likely consequences of certain economic decisions, which associated risk with probability and uncertainty. Capitalism, which emphasizes the dimension of the future by constantly calculating

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future gains and losses, is inseparably linked with risk, and therefore results in a boom in the field of insurance, which in turn leads people to the belief that they can influence and manage the future. The concept of risk has therefore been part of modernity from the beginning, but the nature of today’s threats is new and substantially different. The industrialism of the 19th century mitigated risk with an insurance system based on assessments and substantiated calculation of reparation and compensation for incurred losses, in an attempt to bring rationality to bear on uncertainties and threats. However, these measures of the past have tended to fail when faced with the risks of today. Risks are no longer socially limited by being contained in a particular place (such as the site of an industrial enterprise) but generally threaten life on this planet in all its manifestations; put simply, these are global risks. A characteristic feature of contemporary risks is their “nonfeasibility,” which is related to the way that they are spread: They become stowaways of normal consumption. They travel with the wind and water, they hide in everything, and with what is the most essential to life — the air we breathe, the food, clothing, and household equipment — they try to overwhelm the — in all other respects so strictly controlled — buffer zones of modernity (Beck, 1992). Another important characteristic of these risks is “latency,” which means a sort of “invisibility”. This confronts us with a problem unknown to the industrial society of the 19th century: how to actually recognize risks? Our innate senses are usually ineffective; diagnosis requires measuring instruments and scientific apparatus. The threats and destruction to which people were exposed as a result of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor, both on site and in remote areas, lay outside the realm of human perception. Risks must therefore primarily be discovered and named. This is a matter complicated not only by latency but also by multifaceted complexes of cause and effect that lie beyond the field of everyday knowledge. Primary responsibility in their identification and definition lies with science. In this context, Beck turns to the well-known statement of Marx that “consciousness determines Soc ieties an d the Pr oce sse s o f C ha nge

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being.” Risks become what they are through expert recognition. But it is also true that until they are scientifically recognized “they do not exist” — in any case, at least not legally, medically, technologically, or socially. Therefore, they are not even suppressed, managed, or compensated for (Beck, 1992, pp. 51 90). Beck talks about how the arrival of the risk society — due to modernization — represents a fundamental social change; one which, however, did not come openly, but secretly, in the form of a “silent revolution”; it was an overthrow without a subject and without the alternation of elites, which affects the common destiny of all living beings on this planet. If today, owing to global interconnection and contexts, the different types of threats mutually mingle and intensify, it is necessary to talk about a “world risk society” (Beck, 1999b). Catastrophe — also an expression of Greek origin — indicates an event that transforms in a negative way leading to major damage. Catastrophe theory has developed as a branch of mathematics (its founders include René Thom, 1989) which has found application in other disciplines, for example, in biology, psychology, or medicine. It examines in particular how the accumulation of small effects can lead to a big event of catastrophic nature (Buchanan, 2000). In the area of social sciences, interest in catastrophes — especially of an ecological character — was provoked by the work of Charles Perrow, Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies (Perrow, 1984) and then further developed in connection with the modernization risks highlighted by Ulrich Beck. René Thom explores, among other things, whether a crisis is always manifested by some visible signs or morphological symptoms. He pronounces that in the case of living creatures crisis symptoms remain relatively inconspicuous and sometimes even lacking completely. This is because, while functionality is usually negatively affected in a crisis, structure often remains intact (Thom, 1985, p. 30). From this perspective, it is essential to distinguish between crisis and catastrophe. Catastrophe represents a phenomenon inherently highly visible, a certain observable discontinuity, and a quite obvious “fact.” Crisis may be latent or insidiously creeping. Quite often it manifests itself only by the

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quantitative (rather than qualitative) breakdown of certain regulatory processes: as in the case of an inflationary crisis in economics. However, between crisis and catastrophe there is an obvious connection: crisis often announces catastrophe, it precedes it or causes it (ibid.). If catastrophes represent a collapse or failure of the system occurring as an uncontrollable fall, then we can talk about collapse. In 1988, the American archaeologist Joseph A. Tainter, in The Collapse of Complex Societies, raised the question of the collapse of empires, governing structures, or other complex organizational forms. He presented nearly two dozen cases of societal collapse (the most famous being the case of the Mayan city-states) (Tainter, 1988). The theme raised by this work later became popular particularly thanks to Jared Diamond (2005) and is discussed in specialized literature (McAnany & Yoffee, 2010; Taylor, 2008). It is obvious that this very broad interest in the issue of collapse is related to current concerns about whether something of that kind could even threaten our present civilization, especially as it undergoes a protracted financial crisis.

One Concept — Many Manifestations As has been mentioned, the original meaning of crisis was associated with the decisive moment of development: to be or not to be, essentially. People have always been confronted with crises, which represent some element of the conditio humana (Michalski, 1985, p. 7). This may involve not only crises of a unique, unparalleled character, but also crises that recur. Crises very often represent a transition between two developmental stages. However, some thinkers consider that the nature of crises has changed, so that although they may develop in a slow, gradual, or sneaking process, there may also be sudden and rapid turnarounds. It is in this light that crises are understood by some thinkers as an attribute of modernity, as something “genetically” linked with its development. Thus, crisis symptoms have been detected by many theorists throughout modern history. Soc ieties an d the Pr oce sse s o f C ha nge

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Theories which deal with crises usually survey some basic issues, including causes, driving forces, individual and collective actors, structures and functions, causality, interdependence, regularity, and randomness (Prisching, 1986, pp. 38 58). Crises can be considered at different levels. They may be crises of individual human lives (Lay, 1980, pp. 175 181), which are examined by the natural sciences and psychology, or crises of family or interpersonal relationships. Social sciences are concerned primarily with social crises, which may be partial and relate to individual aspects of life, or particular social subsystems (economics, politics, religion, culture, science), or crises of a holistic, complex (national, society-wide) nature. In their broadest scale, crises may manifest themselves as crises of a global character. Paul Ricoeur speaks of “regional” and “general” notions of crises. In his analysis, he examines several “focal points,” from which he derives the term “regional,” and wonders whether it is possible to get from these to a “general” or “global” notion (Ricoeur, 1986, pp. 38 57). The first “focal point” is medicine, in which the crisis is the moment where the disease reveals its “hidden pathology,” and this determines whether healing is to occur or not. The second “focal point” is psycho-physiological development, where this term is used not to express the threat of some catastrophe, but developmental periods characterized by increased imbalance and vulnerability (e.g., adolescence). The third case is the “cosmopolitan” model and refers to crisis at the level of world political history. The fourth, “epistemological,” is related to the development of science (in Kuhn’s approach this is a paradigmatic crisis). The fifth case is “economic” crisis, characterized by autonomy, periodicity, and a global character, which represents, according to Ricoeur, one of the main impulses for the development of a general theory of crises. The author himself arrives at the conclusion that crisis can be defined as the pathology of the process of temporalization of history, which involves dysfunction of the normally existing relationships between the horizon of expectation and the space of experience (ibid., p. 57). In this context, it is worth recalling the idea of Knut Borchardt (inspired by Marx), that distinguishes between a crisis “in itself”

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and a crisis “for itself” (Borchardt, 1986, pp. 142 145). A crisis “in itself” is an objective fact that people are not (at least temporarily) aware of, while a crisis “for itself” is a situation when the manifestations of crisis have already become part of human experience and self-reflection. This self-reflection crisis can be seen as a “warning” (i.e., something must be done to avoid the worst, e.g. a catastrophe or a collapse), as a “malignant disease” which must be treated in order to regain good health or as a “benign disease” that is not worth healing, where falling ill is necessary to strengthen the immunity of our “organism,” or possibly a “fate” against which is useless to act. The consciousness of crises is characterized by a sense of threat or even fear of extinction. Reflection on crisis has frequently been associated with a moment of surprise, as crisis moments usually manifest themselves suddenly, unexpectedly, and with intensity. This causes the urgent need to find solutions under conditions of time pressure and uncertainty.

Plurality of Explanatory Frameworks Views on crises, catastrophes, and collapses in historical sociological research concern how they are positioned within interpretive frameworks, and the theoretical and spatio-temporal contexts in which they are to be considered. The way in which the overall issue of social change is evaluated is to a large extent defined and differentiated by this positioning. As mentioned earlier, in terms of interpretative principles several types of theories of social change can be distinguished. The first is cyclical theories, assuming that social change follows development in a circle (one variant sees history monistically as a single stream that returns repeatedly; another sees history pluralistically as the duration of individual cultures or civilizations, each of which goes through development, from birth to extinction). The second is theories which emphasize discontinuities characterized by revolutionary jumps or breaks. A third type includes theories of linear, continuous development, largely — but not entirely — associated with the notion of evolution. Soc ieties an d the Pr oce sse s o f C ha nge

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In both the cyclical types, crisis occupies an important position. The former associates crisis with transitions to different developmental stages (see Sorokin, 1946), the latter with transitions into bankrupt, decadent phases of the historical cycle leading to extinction. In theories that emphasize historical discontinuity, crisis announces the end of one historic phase and the arrival of a qualitatively different phase. Theories of linear evolution, meanwhile, typically relate the theme of crisis to the need for social equilibrium and adaptation to living conditions; in this process society is founded. Crisis in this context is related to “deficiencies in adaptation” (Prisching, 1986, p. 66), which refers to various social phenomena, such as economic and financial crises, ecological crises, the crisis of growth, the crisis of the welfare state, the crisis of state administration, the crisis of legitimacy, and identity crisis. In addition to the diverse conceptions of the theory of social change it inspires, crisis also plays an important role in spatiotemporal frameworks. Immanuel Wallerstein, building on Braudel’s concept of different levels of time, creates the concept of five kinds of spacetime: (I) Episodic-geopolitical spacetime, (II) Cyclical ideological spacetime, (III) Structural spacetime,14 (IV) Eternal spacetime,15 (V) Transformational spacetime (Wallerstein, 2000).16 What is essential

14. Wallerstein’s Episodic-geopolitical, Cyclical ideological, and Structural spacetime corresponds to Braudel’s concept of the different dynamics of historical movements that take place at the level of histoire événementielle, histoire conjoncturelle, and histoire structurelle. 15. Wallerstein’s concept of eternal spacetime is probably influenced by the concepts of Pitirim Sorokin, who in his work Sociocultural Causality of 1943 speaks of three levels of sociocultural time that — inspired by medieval philosophers — he calls Tempus (time), Aevum (age), and Aeternitas (eternity) (Sorokin, 1964, p. 216). Tempus indicates phenomena situated in the stream of changes. The aevum level is associated with the majority of socio-cultural validities, truths, and values to be applied over indefinitely long periods (“half eternal”). Aeternitas represents the level at which eternal validities are “located”; truths, pure meanings, and values, the world of eternal, unchanging, timeless being. 16. Transformative spacetime is linked to the question of whether and how historical transitions, revolutions, or moments of choice take place. The author notes that transformative spacetime is associated with the concept of structural spacetime, because it can occur only if there are developmental structures that lead to branching with uncertain outcomes. Here then the question arises of whether the event actually concerns the point at which such branching occurs. If so, what historical alternatives does this system face?

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here is that the various historical events — and therefore also crises, catastrophes, or collapses — can be viewed from different perspectives, at different levels of time or spacetime. From each of these perspectives a somewhat different view on events emerges. While from the perspective of histoire événementielle, we can see a crisis as a particular historical event or sequence of events, from the perspective of histoire conjoncturelle the same crisis may appear as part of the broader complex of long term ongoing development cycles of rises and falls. Finally, from the perspective of histoire structurelle, it may be understood somewhat differently still: either as a manifestation of a long-term repeating structural formula, or vice versa, as the point at which current development breaks and attempts the establishment of a different formula or structure. Wallerstein himself demonstrated this problem using the example of the collapse of the Soviet Union (ibid., pp. 114 116). On the level of histoire événementielle, this may follow a chain of certain historical events analyzed in detail in a number of studies. At the level of histoire conjoncturelle and histoire structurelle, however, not just one but several options may exist simultaneously, depending upon what interpretative framework (structural spacetime) we accept. Thus we might have: (a) the historical development of the world economic system (expressed in the categories of core, periphery, and semiperiphery); (b) the history of a part of the world central to the development of modernization; (c) the development of that part of the world which industrialized eventually; (d) history as spacetime defined through religio-culture (Constantinople, Byzantium, Moscow). At the same time, however, there are approaches that come from the assumption of eternal spacetime, and these take the collapse of the USSR as an inevitable event preceded by the essentially pointless attempt to oppose the natural human tendency to private ownership. Finally, you can think about the context of transformative spacetime, which is, according to Wallerstein, linked to the concept of structural spacetime, as it appears only when there are developmental structures that lead to branching (bifurcation) of outcomes. In this case, the question must be asked whether the Soc ieties an d the Pr oce sse s o f C ha nge

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monitored event is really the point at which such branching occurs and what historical alternatives can follow it.

Current Issues The attitudes of representatives of individual social sciences to the issue of crises are certainly not identical. Notable attention has been given to them in economics, where crises have been studied since the mid-19th century (de Soto, 2006). However, as Knut Borchardt points out, given the frequency of crises in the capitalist economy, they have lost their exceptionalness in the eyes of many economists. From the perspective of cyclical development, crises seem to be something essentially just as “normal” as any other phase of the cycle (Borchardt, 1986, pp. 128 130). In addition, many theorists attribute them with a curative character, pointing to a new upward phase or boom. The exception in this respect was the world economic crisis of 1929, which unfolded in a way distinct from its predecessors or successors and was distinguished by its unprecedented destructive consequences (Smiley, 2002). Borchardt in this context warns against excessive optimism and reliance on the utility of economic crises, stressing that crises must be studied and findings deduced that can serve as corrections of structural discrepancies (Borchardt, 1986, pp. 140 142). This raises the major issue of the nature and seriousness of the current manifestations of economic crisis (Foster & Magdoff, 2009; Varoufakis, 2013). Is this just one of many descending phases of repeating economic cycles, or is the nature of this crisis different, deeper, and more fundamental? Taking the analysis beyond the strictly economic analytical approach, sociological thinkers such as Immanuel Wallerstein, Randall Collins, Michael Mann, George Derluguian, and Craig Calhoun (2013, pp. 163 192) are venturesome in their forecasts. These authors have concluded that the world currently finds itself at a mid-term historical phase originating in the crisis of the 1970s. They agree that we have entered a stormy and dark period of history, which we can assume will last several decades and is very likely to lead to significant structural transformations on

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a worldwide scale. They believe nevertheless that it is possible to consider at least three developmental alternatives: one is the final crisis of capitalism as a world system; a second is the decline of the former capitalist hegemonies and their replacement by new ones; a third supposes an ecological shock of global proportions causing subsequent transformations (ibid., p. 178). According to these authors, such a systemic crisis would spread devastation and provoke violent behavior. Therefore, it is necessary to think through collective strategies to cope with such situations and prevent violence. Let us add that such views represent only a few of numerous diagnoses encountered in contemporary disputations, but their influence on public debate and policy making is nevertheless felt. These diagnoses frequently differ in their details, but the substance of them is that the problems we are facing are deeper than we are willing to admit. The danger they suppose — if the current phase of development of modernity continues reflexively (reflexive modernization) — is that insufficient and inadequate reflection on ongoing processes could cause crisis to become breakdown and ultimately collapse. How grounded these views are in sound theory and applicable to reality will no doubt be judged by successor theorists and social development itself.

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Ideas of the Sociological “Founders”

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Part

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In this chapter, we briefly survey the ideas of the founders of sociology which influenced the development of social sciences and humanities. Our aim is not to review the entire history of the sociological discipline, and thus we select a few personalities from the wide range of authors, directions, and schools that emerged in the 19th century and early 20th century whose work is truly essential and has inspired historical sociological thinking since. In broad terms, this concerns Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim, although we will discuss a number of other thinkers who helped form the intellectual climate (Zeitgeist) into which these great personalities emerged and to which they had to respond. Our account is also — perhaps not quite organically — distinguished by two thematic reflections. The first treats the rational handling of time, one of the main themes in the works of Max Weber; the other is devoted to the topic of collective memory, which originated from Durkheim’s theory of collective consciousness. Paraphrasing Isaac Newton, Robert K. Merton once expressed the idea that modern researchers are able to achieve their penetrating insight into the research problems that they examine mainly because they are standing on the shoulders of giants (Merton,

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1985). These giants are the thinkers of previous generations, who created the foundations on which contemporary researchers build their knowledge. If we today see a little farther than they could, it is only because they provided us with our elevated viewpoint. Yet this need not mean following slavishly in a way set and determined by these greats, obediently echoing their footfalls. Indeed, quite the opposite: any really new knowledge is always a break with what went before, which must be overhauled. In other words, the long-term process of the development of knowledge is always a unity of continuity and discontinuity.

Sociology as a Science of Social Statics and Dynamics Any study of historical sociology would demand at least a brief examination of the life and work of the French thinker Auguste Comte, an author traditionally portrayed as the founder of sociology. An intellectual personality whose ideas greatly influenced the 19th and 20th centuries, Comte founded the science of society and even created the name “sociology.” Moreover, Comte was also the creator of a new philosophical system called positivism, which proved of great importance not only in philosophy but also in other sciences in the 19th and in the 20th centuries, developing later into neo-positivism. In the framework of sociological thinking, Comte’s conception can be seen as the first, through the concept of “social dynamics,” to give sociology its historical sociological dimension. Auguste Comte was born in 1798, in the French city of Montpellier. From 1814 to 1816, he studied natural sciences at the École Polytechnique in Paris, but was expelled for his freethinking views. Subsequently, in 1817, he became private secretary to the French social thinker Henri de Saint-Simon (1760 1825). Undoubtedly, Saint-Simon was a major intellectual influence on Comte, and was certainly the source of many of his later ideas. However, by 1824 they had parted on bad terms, each blaming the other for the theft of his ideas. Upon his split from Saint-Simon, Comte ran into financial difficulties, lacking as he did independent

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means and being continually unable to find a permanent job. Despite such misfortunes, he managed to create an impressive literary oeuvre, which had a major impact on the next generation of thinkers. Abandoned and alone, Comte died in 1857, regarded — probably rightly — as insane. Comte’s writings form an extensive corpus, and here we mention only two. The Course in Positive Philosophy (in six volumes, published 1830 1842, Comte, 1907, 1908a, 1908b) was the most important of Comte’s works, wherein he elaborated the principles of the classification of the sciences, positive philosophy, and sociology. The System of Positive Polity (published in four volumes from 1851 to 1881, Comte, 1967a, 1967b), meanwhile, was a late work devoted to the basis of politics and the religion of the future. Its full title is The System of Positive Polity, or Treatise Establishing the Religion of Humanity. In The Course in Positive Philosophy Comte dealt with the general issues of science, and more directly with the system of sciences that existed in his time (Comte, 1907, pp. 16 17). Its chief aim was the systematic sorting and classification of the branches of science. In this context, he noted that one science was missing — the science of society. At first, Comte called this missing science “social physics” (a term borrowed from the Belgian statistician and demographer Adolphe Quetelet); in the fourth part of The Course in Positive Philosophy he coined the term “sociology,” a term comprising two parts, the first from the Latin term for society and the second of Greek origin. Comte was the founder of a new philosophical direction, positivism (Comte, 1967a, pp. 8 320). Philosophical positivism is directed against what Comte calls metaphysics, a stance that he extensively criticizes and rejects, and which he believed to have prevailed throughout the whole of philosophical thinking from its inception. Metaphysics is a way of thinking that assumes that reality is twofold, comprising an exterior surface that we perceive through our senses, and an essence hidden behind that surface. Metaphysical thinking tries to pass beyond this surface, to remove the cover, penetrating into the hidden essence or substance of things. Comte reached a fundamental rejection of denial of metaphysics through his assertion that reality is single, which we Ideas of the Sociological “Fo un der s”

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receive solely through our senses. On this basis, he believed, it was necessary to construct all our knowledge. The basis of our knowledge is empirical research into things around us, based on direct personal observation. Moreover, the ability of our senses is in fact enhanced by a variety of measuring instruments and apparata. From these observations, we create systematic records. Through their evaluation, we observe regularities, congruences, successions, correlations, and causal relationships, and by generalization of these, we discover scientific laws. Comte’s positivist philosophy can be considered a generalized expansion of the methods of knowledge applied by the natural sciences of his time (Comte, 1908a, pp. 151 247). Positivist-oriented sociology has always stood close to the natural sciences and, as noted previously, sees its own pattern in the natural sciences, and thus seeks to use the same tools, i.e., mathematics and quantitative methodology. In addition, positivist sociology asserts its goal to be — as in the natural sciences — the attainment of scientific sociological laws. By contrast, anti-positivist sociology rejects the idea that sociology’s necessary aim is the formulation of scientific laws. Auguste Comte gave sociology its first program. Under this, sociology consisted of two parts, the first termed social statics (Comte, 1908a, pp. 283 327, 1967b) and the second, social dynamics (Comte, 1908a, pp. 328 387, 1908b, 1967c). Social statics deals with the question of what society is composed of, and how these unities hold together to create an orderly whole (i.e., the social order). Today, the concept of social statics is no longer in use, with the preferred term now being “social structure” instead. For Comte, society — as a “social organism” — is composed not of individuals but of families, and the family is its basic sociological unit (Comte, 1908a, p. 294). In the aggregate, many families together give rise to forces that hold them together in consensus. As the founder of “consensus theory” in sociology, Comte defined the two basic consensus forces as cooperation, based on the division of labor (ibid., 313 ff.), and shared religious faith (Comte, 1967b, pp. 7 137), which creates a consensus of social values and norms. As regards social dynamics, this follows the question of the historical development of societies. Indeed, in Comte’s

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conception of sociology the idea of social dynamics actually represents what can be called historical sociology. Comte understood social dynamics as a theory of progress (Comte, 1908a, 328 ff.). First emerging in the period of the French Enlightenment, this is based on the idea that human development arose from a primitive past to a present that is higher and more advanced, leading to a future of the highest maturity and prosperity. Comte, understanding historical development toward progress as an inevitable process, speaks about the “law of three stages.” These three stages represent for him the development of the human mind. According to the law of three stages, human development is divided into three historical periods: theological, metaphysical, and positive (Comte, 1908b, pp. 1 259). The first and longest is called the theological stage (from theology — the science of religion), and in turn is subdivided into periods associated successively with fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism. The second period is the metaphysical stage. Historically, this is the era of the development of science and religious reformation. The third — the positive stage — is associated with Comte’s own contribution, with the emergence of positivist philosophy and sociology. Comte imagined the society of the future as an industrial society based on industrial production, scientifically organized and managed. The most important role in the scientific management of this new society was to be played by sociology and sociologists. Comte’s ideas about future society are close to socialism, which should come as no surprise as his mentor, Saint-Simon, was one of the founders of socialist ideology. On the one hand, Comte understood traditional religion as something obsolete, associated with the earlier stages of development, to be replaced by science and the scientific management of society. On the other hand, he considered religion socially very important — one of the two basic forces that integrate society. Therefore Comte, especially in the final phase of his life, began to devote his attention to the issue of a new religion as the basis of the future industrial society. Comte called this religion a “religion of humanity” (Comte, 1967a, pp. 321 399), a “positivist church.” The Religion of Humanity is a paradoxical religion, because it is Ideas of the Sociological “Fo un der s”

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a secular faith based on the worship of science. Within it, sociologists act as its preachers and dignitaries.

The Evolution of the Social Organism The second important figure in the history of sociology after Comte was the British sociologist Herbert Spencer (1820 1903). This renowned British scientist never attended college or university. Entirely self-taught, he nevertheless created a very extensive scientific legacy, important beyond the field of sociology, extending into biology, psychology, ethics, and many other disciplines. Spencer maintained continuity with the positivist basis of Comte, but is of particular interest in that he linked positivism with evolutionary theory (Spencer, 1966a, pp. 246 325). An evolutionist even before Darwin, he later became a promoter of Darwin’s ideas. In marked contrast to Comte and his socialist ideas, Spencer was a liberal, ascribing chief importance to the freedom of the individual. Spencer stressed that advanced society must guarantee individuals space for their individual freedom and individual choice. The evolutionary maturity of any given society could be deduced, in Spencer’s view, from the extent to which it guaranteed individual freedom. The most important of Spencer’s works is The Principles of Sociology (1876 1896, Spencer, 1966b, 1966c), where he developed his understanding of society as an organism (Spencer, 1966b, pp. 437 450) with its own course of evolutionary development — similar to a biological organism. At the beginning of either evolutionary process, whether biological or social, the organisms in existence were small and simple, with primitive structures. As they evolved over time to adapt to external circumstances both types of organisms have grown bigger and more complex (Spencer, 1966c, p. 646). Moreover, through evolution, there has been an increasing process of differentiation. In the case of social entities, what were originally simple organisms have gradually differentiated on the basis of the principle of division of labor, and have grown into more complex structures.

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In Herbert Spencer’s interpretation, two types of society are distinguished in evolutionary development. The older and simpler type of society is militant (military) society (ibid., pp. 568 602), while the newer and more complex is industrial society (ibid., pp. 603 642). Occupying the earlier era of evolution, the militant society had two basic social classes: masters or warriors, and their exploited subordinates or slaves (Spencer, 1966b, pp. 480 481). The newer, industrial society has three basic social classes: a class for production (sustaining the system), a class for trade and commerce (enabling distribution), and a class engaged in intellectual activities and administration (regulating the system) (ibid., pp. 486 536). While the less advanced military society maintains its integration and order through power and military coercion, the more complex and highly evolved industrial society maintains its integration and order through cooperation based on the division of labor. Spencer connected evolution with the theory of progress. At the end of his life, however, Spencer’s faith in progress wavered. Witnessing the many military conflicts that had sprung up in Europe and the world, Spencer interpreted this as the decline of industrial society and the return of militant society, a process that he termed re-barbarization. Spencer’s thought was very influential in the 19th century, but in the early 20th century began to lose its sway. A degree of inspirational power in sociology was retained by Spencer’s idea of evolutionary differentiation, adopted by theorists of social systems in the 20th century like Talcott Parsons and Niklas Luhmann.

Historical Materialism Karl Marx was the author of one of the world’s most influential and historically significant theoretical systems; one which even today attracts strong critiques but many followers (even new followers, especially in poorer countries). The theoretical system that Marx created resembled a historical sociology, and some contemporary historical sociologists are still followers of Marx. Ideas of the Sociological “Fo un der s”

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As we shall see, he combined economic ideas with concepts of societal formations, which he saw working progressively through history, to create a hugely influential explanatory framework. Marx’s theoretical system is sometimes associated with the expression the “materialist conception of history.” More often, however, the term “historical materialism” is used. It is interesting that Marx himself did not use the term “sociology,” and he certainly did not term himself a sociologist. However, today Marx is seen as one of the most important figures in 19th century sociology, and his theoretical system is a doctrine about the historical development of mankind, beginning with an ancient type of society without classes. This is followed by a phase of history in which classes exist in society, while, in the end, a society without classes will emerge again. Marx’s theory revolves around the doctrine of “class struggle” (or class conflict), culminating in a social revolution to establish the final classless communist society.

Predecessors To understand Marx’s views properly, it is necessary to know those whose theories he followed. Marx was influenced by several lines of European thought: German idealist philosophy (the philosophers Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Ludwig Feuerbach), British classical political economy (the economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo), the founders of socialist doctrine (whom Marx characterized as utopian socialists, such as Henri de SaintSimon, Charles Fourier, and Robert Owen), and the French historians of the early 19th century (Augustin Thierry, Francois Guizot, Francois Mignet). Most crucial for a genuine understanding of Karl Marx’s thinking are the outlines of German classical philosophy, especially the work of the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 1831). One of the most systematically oriented minds in Western philosophy, Hegel generated a philosophical system best described as objective-idealistic. Although Hegel’s philosophical system was fundamentally opposed to Marx’s materialist philosophy, Hegel had a powerful impact on Marx. Part of his

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objective-idealistic philosophy was the dialectical method, and it was this that Marx took from Hegel and used in historical materialism. What is Hegelian dialectic? Simply put, it is the doctrine of contradictions (Hegel, 1963). In Hegel’s view, everything we encounter in the world has a contradictory nature which gives things their dynamics and forms the source of historical movement. Hegel’s dialectic is characterized by certain principles. One is development in three stages, sometimes called the “law of negation of negation,” or “the Hegelian triad.” A second is the contradictory relationship of antinomies, which constitute a contradictory unity. Marx takes these and uses them in his historical materialism. Hegel’s philosophy was a culmination of idealism in EarlyModern German Philosophy. Historical development had to be understood as the development of the Absolute Spirit, which he regarded as transpiring in three phases in which the absolute spirit transforms according to the principle of the negation of negation. Hegel calls these three stages as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. In the first phase (thesis, meaning at the beginning), absolute spirit exists only in its spiritual form, i.e., as pure thought, as an idea. The second phase (antithesis) is a negation of the first phase, negating the spiritual nature of the absolute spirit as it takes on the form of nature. As the absolute spirit is transformed into substance, it thus becomes alienated from itself, and denies its spiritual essence. In the third phase (synthesis), human beings appear as the creators of philosophy, in which the absolute spirit becomes human knowledge. Hence, through philosophy, the absolute spirit recognizes itself and all historical development is completed. Let us add that in Hegel’s philosophy, the idea of synthesis, that is to say, the third phase of development, is not only a negation (i.e., denial) of the previous second phase, but also a developmental stage that maintains everything from the past of value and importance. In Marx’s thinking, we find the application of this Hegelian triad to the issue of historical development. Marx too believes that human development has three phases. The first phase (“thesis”) Ideas of the Sociological “Fo un der s”

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comprises the original forms of human coexistence, taking the form of a classless society. The second phase (“antithesis”) is the stage in which there appear different types of class-based society, e.g., antique, feudal, and bourgeois. The third phase (“synthesis”) is the new type of classless society — that is to say, communism. According to Hegel, all phenomena have their own hidden inner substance, yet this is characterized by two opposing parts. These create a unity, but a “dialectical” one, meaning a contradictory unity, which is not stable or intransigent, but develops over time. It is this inner — or in Hegel’s terminology “immanent” — contradiction that is the driving force which makes things grow and changes the world. Marx applied the Hegelian dialectical principle not simply to broad philosophical reflections but directly to the social order, in order to explain the relationship between the proletariat (the working class) and bourgeoisie (the capitalist class). Under capitalism, both of these classes coexist in a sort of contradictory unity — in opposition, yet unified because the proletariat cannot exist without the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie cannot exist without the proletariat. Both classes are therefore interdependent, yet hardly in a state of harmony. On the contrary, the relationship is dialectically contradictory and this develops into antagonism, which according to Marx cannot be resolved except through the proletariat conducting a social revolution and thus abolishing both classes. Ludwig Feuerbach (1804 1872) belonged to the German Hegelian philosophical school. Feuerbach influenced Karl Marx through his radical views on religion, as well as significantly inspiring Marx’s conception of alienation. Feuerbach dealt with the philosophy of religion (Feuerbach, 1960) and came to the conclusion that religion is caused by a particular kind of alienation. According to Feuerbach, people create their image of God in such a way as to project their best (i.e., ideal) human qualities and features. In this view, God is not merely a human design: God is, in fact, human nature, alienated from its creator and transformed into something absolute. If, in Feuerbach’s view, humanity constructs its God in this way, subsequently God appears as an

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external, alienated, unknowable and incomprehensible being, to which man is subordinate.1 Despite the deep anchoring of his thought in the tradition of German philosophy, Marx is likely to have regarded himself primarily as an economist. His main work was Das Kapital and it is a work of economics. In this respect, Marx was influenced by the British field of political economy, represented mainly by two liberal economists: Adam Smith (1723 1790), and his student David Ricardo (1772 1823). Marx drew inspiration from both economists for — to cite one example — his theory of classes. Smith (1996 [1776]) and Ricardo wrote about economic classes before Marx did, and explained — in a manner later assumed by Marx — the class differences in society, on the basis of the different positions of people in the economic system. Likewise, socialist ideas were present among a number of thinkers prior to Marx. Marx built his systematic analysis on these older ideas, but at the same time regarded them critically, terming these older socialist doctrines — in comparison to his own system of historical materialism — utopian, unscientific, and unrealistic (Marx & Engels, 1968 [1948], pp. 52 55; Engels, 1968 [1880], p. 150). The main leaders of socialist thinking before Marx were SaintSimon, Charles Fourier, and Robert Owen. The French aristocrat Count Henri de Saint-Simon (1760 1825), mentioned previously in this chapter, was the teacher (and employer) of the founder of sociology, Auguste Comte. Saint-Simon divided mankind into two: the “national” (or “industrialist”) part, producers, bankers, businessmen, workers, scholars, and artists — in brief, all who do useful work — and the “anti-national” “parasitic,” non-working part of society: nobility and clergy that do not produce but merely consume (Durkheim, 1959, p. 135). The future society — according to Saint-Simon — would be a society of an industrial character, scientifically planned and managed, in which everyone would 1. In this context, we can note that similar ideas about the genesis of religion were later formulated by French sociologist Emile Durkheim, who believed that religion is an idealized image of human society.

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work and there would be no parasitic groups. Saint-Simon rejected violent revolution but wanted to achieve social change through the spread of positive knowledge and faith in a “New Christianity” (Saint-Simon, 1911, 1962). Charles Fourier (1772 1837), another French thinker, not only proposed the reform of society (Fourier, 1971), but also tried to implement his proposals. He and his students founded manufacturing communities (something like cooperatives), which he called “phalanstères,” in France and America. Nonetheless, his attempt failed. Robert Owen (1771 1858), meanwhile, was an English textile factory owner and author of the book in whose title the word “socialism” first appeared — What is Socialism? — in 1841. Like Fourier, Owen also tried to implement his socialist ideas (Owen, 1972), in an American colony called New Harmony, but his attempt met with no greater success than Fourier’s. Several French historians from the early 19th century — Augustin Thierry (1795 1856), Francois Guizot (1787 1874), or Francois Mignet (1796 1884) — used the term “classes” in connection with their analysis of the French Revolution and contemporary history. Turning their attention to clashes between different groups in French society, they described them as grounded in disputes between social classes. Here, for the first time — even before Marx — the idea of class struggle made its first appearance in European social thought.

The Thinker Who Wished to Change the World Karl Marx was born in 1818 in Trier in Prussian Rhineland, into a Jewish family which had converted from Judaism to Protestantism. As his father was a lawyer, Marx was sent to study law at the University of Bonn. However, his behavior in Bonn — he was wild, drank, and fought duels — forced his father to send him to the University of Berlin. There, Marx studied philosophy. In 1842, he became editor of the newspaper Rheinische Zeitung, which radically criticized social conditions in Prussia; the Prussian government closed it down in 1843. In the same year, Marx married his love Jenny von Westphalen. Shortly afterward they went into

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exile, in 1845 — first to Paris and then to Brussels. From that point onwards, Marx was intensely engaged in cooperation with political radicals and revolutionaries, as well as establishing his lifelong friendship with Friedrich Engels (who later supported him financially). Together, Marx and Engels wrote the Manifesto of the Communist Party — a political program for the radical Communist League — which was published in 1848. Many other texts were also produced under the joint authorship of Marx and Engels. In 1849, Marx moved to London, where he lived for the rest of his life. In the years 1864 1872 Marx was a member of international workers’ organizations under the title of the “First International.” Less radical than the Communist League, the First International supported neither communism nor violent revolution. In 1867, Marx published the first volume of his most important writing, Das Kapital, a project on which he worked for almost 20 years, but failed to finish. It was only after Marx’s death in London in 1883 that Friedrich Engels, working from Marx’s manuscripts, published the second volume in 1885, and the third volume in 1894. Marx was an exceptionally prolific writer; of his many publications, five stand out as crucial texts for historical sociology: manuscripts known under the designation The German Ideology (Marx & Engels, 1964 [1845 1846]), The Manifesto of the Communist Party (Marx & Engels, 1968 [1848]), A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (Marx, 1968 [1859], the preface to this work includes a very precise formulation of Marx’s historical materialism), The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (Marx, 1968 [1852], in this study Marx applied the principles of historical materialism in the analysis of the revolutionary events in the years 1848 1851 in France), and Capital (Das Kapital) in three volumes (Marx, 1962 [1867], 1963 [1885], 1964 [1894]). Marx’s ideas on history were formed through the influence of the Hegelian dialectical approach, emphasizing the substantive contradictions of social phenomena. It is these dialectic contradictions that give social phenomena their evolutionary dynamics. From the anthropological point of view, Marx sees the human being as a physical or tangible being whose basic need is the Ideas of the Sociological “Fo un der s”

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material reproduction of life. These material needs are satisfied by human work, i.e., by production. In terms of historical experience, Karl Marx most strongly expressed his admiration for the French Revolution, and many other revolutions that took place in the 19th century (Marx, 1968 [1850]). Marx provided a very precise description of his materialistic conception of history (known as historical materialism) in his “Preface to the Critique of Political Economy” (Marx, 1968 [1859], pp. 335 337). He describes the historical development of humanity as the changing course of socioeconomic formations. According to Marx, in every socioeconomic formation we can distinguish a base (production) and a superstructure (e.g., religion, politics, law, art, and science). The economic base is primary and decisive, while the superstructure is secondary and dependent on the base. The character of different socioeconomic formations is determined by the presence of different modes of production. Marx understands mode of production to mean a dialectical unity between productive forces (i.e., the technological nature of the production) and productive relations (i.e., the relations between classes in the course of production). According to Marx every socioeconomic formation throughout human history has been characterized by the existence of two antagonistic classes. These classes are linked through interdependence, but at the same time create an insurmountable antagonism. The dialectical relationship between them provides the fundamental antagonism and source of conflict in society. Marx discerned a number of historical stages in the development of human relations, i.e., socioeconomic formations: archaic (without classes), ancient (with slavery), feudal (medieval), and, last of all, bourgeois — in other words capitalism. The ancient formation is viewed as more or less unique to Europe; in Asia, Marx specifically invokes an “Asian mode of production,” different from both Europe’s ancient and feudal modes of production (Melotti, 1972). Marx believed that after the capitalist formation a new communist formation would appear — without classes, reached by the path of a proletarian revolution.

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As mentioned, the dynamic force of historical development arises from the dialectical relationship between productive forces and productive relations; in other words, by the contradictory relationship between the technological means of production and class differentiation. Marx says that productive forces and productive relations mutually ensure their own existence, yet their relationship is not static, but evolving, and can reach the point where further development of productive forces is limited by the existing productive relations — in other words, the point at which development is blocked by class-relations. At that moment, according to Marx, the framework of class-relations in society is destroyed by social revolution. The overthrow of the existing order would take place at the level of the social base, or substructure, but afterward, step by step, changes would be effected in the social superstructure. The collective actor of social change is the class with an objective interest in the development of the forces of production. For example, in the case of bourgeois revolution, it was the class of the bourgeoisie who destroyed the feudal system and installed capitalism. We should note that although Marx’s idea of historical development was influenced by the theory of progress which emerged during the Enlightenment, he did not — in contrast to many of his predecessors and even contemporaries — see progress as something which comes automatically. While Marx understood history as an inevitable process, it was nonetheless one in which historical laws do not work automatically and are dependent on the behavior of collective social actors. The term “classes” plays an important role in Marx’s conception, even though it was not his invention: long before, in the 18th century, this term was employed by political economists and slightly later by French historians. These were an inspiration to Marx, who formed the conclusion that the existence of classes was connected only with certain historical stages, and hence with certain socioeconomic formations. Under capitalism, the class struggle would lead to social revolution and to the emergence of what Marx summarized in the oft-quoted phrase as the “dictatorship of Ideas of the Sociological “Fo un der s”

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the proletariat,” which would lead to the abolition of all classes and the establishment of a classless society. In the first volume of his major work, Das Kapital, Marx analyzed the essence of capitalist exploitation (Marx, 1962 [1867], pp. 177 667), a process that he found to be significantly different from what had occurred in previous socioeconomic formations. In slave societies and feudal systems, there is understandable exploitation, proceeding in an “extra economic” way, in that the slave or serf is forced, by means of violent power, to work for his master or pay him benefits. By contrast, in capitalism the exploitation is based on purely economic mechanisms and therefore in principle “invisible.” It occurs through the worker’s not receiving full payment in his salary for all the work which he has done. The unpaid part of such work creates a surplus value appropriated by capitalists as the essence of profit. It is often claimed that Marx distinguished only two classes in capitalist society — the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. However, this impression is false. Marx discerned a detailed spectrum of other classes in capitalist society, such as the peasant class (peasantry), the petty bourgeoisie (associated in sociology with the term middle class), and the lumpenproletariat (i.e., homeless vagabonds, etc.). Eschewing these differentiations of status, though, Marx puts his full emphasis on the economy, distinguishing these classes on the basis of only one criterion, the position of people in the system of economic production. Contemporary sociological concepts of class, outside strict Marxist interpretations, more often emphasize other criteria, such as education, lifestyle, profession, and prestige. In discussing the differences in class affiliation, Marx distinguishes differences in class consciousness.2 The class consciousness of the ruling classes is, in his opinion, always limited by interests arising from the position they occupy in society. In this 2. It is necessary to add that Marx’s theory of class consciousness influenced the sociology of knowledge of Karl Mannheim (1991 [1929]), and its echo can also be found today in the theory of habitus by Pierre Bourdieu (1984, 169 ff.).

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light, he harshly criticizes the political ideology of the bourgeoisie, which he calls a false and perverted consciousness (Marx & Engels, 1964 [1845 1846]). With regard to his theory of classes, Marx also introduces the terms “the class by itself” and “the class for itself.” The proletariat is the “class by itself,” because it is objectively in the position of the exploited class. But the proletariat becomes a class “for itself” when it realizes its objective position and the common interests which arise from it. Perhaps Marx’s most enduring theoretical contribution, even today after the fall of the majority of “Marxist” regimes around the world, is one of his earliest ideas: the often invoked theory of alienation. The theme of alienation is associated primarily with the early writings of Marx from 1844 (Aptheker, 1965; Marx, 1964 [1844]), and has often been taken as the central tenet of the “Western Marxist” analysis, i.e., the methods used by critical Marxists outside the self-declared Communist states. Having said this, the nature of alienation was not analyzed in detail until his much later work Capital. Alienation under capitalism, according to Marx, occurs on several levels: on one level, workers are exploited in that part of their output is stolen to create business profit in a capitalist system. On another, the worker who thus sells his labor becomes a commodity on the capitalist market, alienating himself from his human nature. On a wider level, the relationships between people under capitalism are based on the circulation of money, so that people in general are alienated from one another. Meanwhile, a person’s very existence in society is measured by money — how rich they are, rather than by their personal qualities. Finally, the system of factory production leads to the degradation of man to a machine-supplement, and the system of factory production dehumanizes human creativity. Marx’s thinking had, and still has, a considerable influence on the thinking of many Western intellectuals. Examples of this include the critical theory of the Frankfurt School in Germany (Adorno, 2006 [1966]; Adorno & Horkheimer, 2008 [1944]; Marcuse, 1964), almost all of the French intellectual scene after World War II (Schoch, 1980), the school of British Marxist historians (Anderson, 1976, 1984; Hobsbawm, 1962, 1975, 1987, 1994, Ideas of the Sociological “Fo un der s”

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1998; Thompson, 1963), dependency theory and world-system theory (Cardoso & Faletto, 1979; Chase-Dunn, 1989; Frank, 1993; Frank, Fuentes-Frank, & Hofbauer, 1990; Wallerstein, 1974, 1980, 1989, 2011), and also several representatives of American historical sociology (Moore, 1966; Skocpol, 1979). However, in recent decades, the thinking of all these authors has dropped a great deal of Marxist orthodoxy and moved away from the original ideas of Marx.

Explaining the Emergence of Capitalism The German thinker Max Weber is key to the history of world sociology, but he was not only a sociologist: a full list of his studies would have to add the history of law, economic history (especially the history of capitalism), religion and religious studies, and political science. He laid the foundations of modern sociology, and partially those of historical sociology, dealing with the issues of sociological theory and method, rural and urban life, capitalism and modernization, the sociology of politics, stratification, religion, culture, and even music. In straining after a scientific approach to areas which had previously been outside traditional research orientations, he brought history in contact with sociological thought, and hence his centrality in the foundations of the subject of our study. Weber (full name: Karl Emil Maximilian Weber) was born in 1864 in the German town of Erfurt. His father was a lawyer and young Max studied law, economics, history, philosophy, and theology in Heidelberg and Berlin, where in 1889 he completed a doctoral dissertation on the development of commercial law in medieval Italian cities (Zur Geschichte der Handelsgesellschaften im Mittelalter). Afterwards, in 1892, he defended his habilitation thesis on the legal aspects of the development of agrarian relations in the Roman Empire (Die Römische Agrargeschichte in ihrer Bedeutung für des Staats — und Privatsrecht). As a university professor, Weber worked at several universities (Freiburg, Heidelberg, Vienna, and Munich), but only for brief

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periods, as he suffered from a nerve disease that prevented his long-term engagement in teaching. From a financial point of view, he was well funded, so he was able to work as an independent scholar and, in spite of his disease, had sufficient time, energy, and invention to ensure the genuinely monumental scope of his lifelong writings. Weber lived with his wife Marianne Schnitger in Heidelberg, where they organized an intellectual salon in their house comprising prominent German thinkers. After her husband’s death, Marianne prepared Max Weber’s manuscript legacy for book publication. In 1904 1905, Max Weber published his best-known work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. This text made its appearance in the journal Archives for Social Science and Social Policy, on which Weber collaborated with Edgar Jaffé and Werner Sombart — a crucial forum for the development of sociology in Germany. During and after World War I, Max Weber worked for the state and participated in several important diplomatic negotiations (in 1919, he took part in the peace talks in Versailles). His death in Munich in 1920 was caused by Spanish flu, the plague that killed millions of people in Europe at that time. From Weber’s bibliography, we will mention only a small number of selected works: as well as the aforementioned The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber, 2002 [1904 1905]), the text: “Basic Sociological Terms”3 (Weber, 1978 [1921 1922], pp. 3 62), presenting Weber’s conception of sociology based on methodological individualism, the study Economic Ethics of World Religions (Weber, 1989, 1996), two lectures: Science as a Vocation (Weber, 2008 [1917 1919], pp. 25 52), and Politics as Vocation (Weber, 2008 [1919], pp. 155 207), and the book Economy and Society (the most comprehensive of Max Weber’s works, reconstructed by his wife Marianne and published after his death, Weber, 1978 [1921 1922]). Many factors affected Max Weber’s intellectual formation, but two vital ones are Karl Marx and the German philosophical 3. This text is from the year 1913.

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tradition. Weber was both influenced by Marx and a critic of his (Collins, 1986, p. 37). Sometimes Weber’s work is even interpreted as a kind of ongoing controversy with Marx, though this claim is somewhat exaggerated. Nevertheless, he does reject Marx’s materialist conception of history (i.e., historical materialism), along with Marx’s theory of classes. Unlike Marx, Weber believes that social change arises not only from economic conditions, but also from spiritual factors. In this sense, Weber tried in some way to supplement and revise Marx’s interpretation of the genesis of capitalism. In Germany in the second half of the 19th century, the dominant philosophical tradition had been set down almost a century earlier by Immanuel Kant in opposition to the positivism of Auguste Comte and his followers. Comte, as we have seen, asserted the pre-eminence of scientific methods in all areas of intellectual activity. By contrast, the German “neo-Kantian” philosophers — Wilhelm Dilthey (1833 1911), Wilhelm Windelband (1848 1915), and Heinrich Rickert (1863 1936) — argued the necessity of a radical distinction between the natural sciences and the humanities. The natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) were forced into generalizations necessary for valid and provable scientific laws. Humanistic studies (Geisteswissenschaften) could not, however, follow the same methods as the natural sciences (Dilthey, 1966, pp. 4 14). The disciplines of the humanities were strictly limited to the description and interpretation of the unique course of human lives and human history, without attempting generalizations. Weber was influenced by all these ideas. He rejected positivism and its methodology, but simultaneously tried to overcome the limitations imposed on the humanities through the stance of the German neo-Kantian philosophers. As a result, he invented a new methodology based both on the standards of scientific method and on German philosophical idealism through its grounding in the concept of “ideal types.” One of the important features of Weber’s sociology is the requirement that sociology should be value-free (wertfrei) science. What does this value-free methodology imply? In practice, it means the avoidance of any statements asserting that one part of

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social reality is right and another is wrong; one thing is positive and another is negative; one thing is good for society and another is bad. Value judgments, in the abstract, are moral assessments based on ethical principles outside the observable facts. For Weber, value judgments could never be part of science. If sociology was to be a science, understood as the formulation of judgments solely concerned with facts, it must be value-neutral, value-free. Evaluation, Weber argued, was the formulation of subjective desires, which introduced irrational elements from ideological and religious systems that deform and harm scientific knowledge. Much debate has emerged over Weber’s requirement for value-free sociology. A number of sociologists have supported Weber’s requirement. Others, however, have rejected it, arguing that sociology has a practical function, and implementing this practical function means evaluating the good and bad of social reality. Weber’s sociology takes as its subject human social action (Weber, 1947, pp. 88 115, 1978 [1921 1922], pp. 4 28) defined as the sum total of all individual actions where one human individual relates to another human individual. All social phenomena, says Weber, can be understood essentially as a series or complex of such related individual social actions. Sociology, Weber insists, must be a science that can explain such actions by understanding their motivations: by understanding the intention which actors associate with their actions. Indeed, one of the key elements in Weber’s theory is the concept of understanding (in German — Verstehen); in this sense, Weber’s entire theoretical approach is designed as an understanding (or interpretative) sociology (in German: die verstehende Soziologie). The chief methodological tool for understanding social action employed by Weber is what he calls the “ideal type.” The ideal type is genuinely ideal in the philosophers’ sense of the word: it is without real existence, created simply to demonstrate the courses that an action could take in ideal conditions, i.e., when influenced by rational factors alone and free from any irrationality. In other words, the ideal type is a kind of model, or — as Weber says — a “utopia” in the sense of something unreal: neither a moral category nor a statistical average, the ideal type is a purely intellectual Ideas of the Sociological “Fo un der s”

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construction for clarifying the sociologist’s understanding of the social phenomena themselves. An example of such an ideal type would be, for example, the ideal type of capitalism. Once one had constructed the ideal type of capitalism, it could be compared with the real situation of actually existing capitalism in a specific country. Such a comparison could show which specific characteristics of real capitalism correspond with the ideal type, and which differ. Most significantly, it should be noted that Weber distinguishes four different ideal types of action (Weber, 1947, pp. 115 118). These are: purposefulrational action, oriented to some purpose or aim; value-orientedrational action, oriented to promote certain values; traditional action, to reproduce traditions; and affective action — the result of emotions like joy or anger. Weber understands all social systems and institutions as products of the social action of individuals. Social phenomena can be understood as a complex created by interconnected individual social actions. Weber explains the emergence of social relations out of individual actions with the help of the term “chance” (Weber, 1947, pp. 118 120). In contrast to deterministic theories of social inevitability, Weber’s use of the term “chance” shows that social relationships do not exist with any iron necessity or regularity, but instead have a probabilistic nature. Weber characterizes social relations as, indeed, largely potential entities, based on the chance that certain interconnected actions do — or will — take place in reality. The theme of social relations is related to the topic of the state and its power. Weber defines the state as a “monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force” (Weber, 1978 [1921 1922]). The assumption of the existence of the state is that the ruler (or the person who stands at the head of the state) has a power monopoly, i.e., the single, exclusive command of armed forces represented by the military and the police. The existence of such a monopoly (as opposed, say, to competing entities with violence at their command) ensures the stability of the state or polity, and guarantees its peace and order. In light of the institutional character of the state, Weber defines power with the help of the concept of

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opportunity (Chance in German). In his conception, power is the opportunity of an actor (individual, group, institution) to enforce their own will against the resistance of others within the framework of a given social relationship (Weber, 1947, p. 152). To describe the power arrangements in society, Weber uses the concept of authority (Herrschaft in German). The structure of authority usually emerges through the relations between a ruling entity or person and the people ruled, relations which are formed by an administrative and military apparatus. Underlying and confirming all types of authority are the belief that the said authority is something normal and legal, and that the asymmetry of power in the relations between the ruling entity or person and the ruled people is taken as something legitimate. Weber distinguishes three ideal types of authority: 1. Traditional authority, derived from the personal authority of the individual ruler and his family by tradition. The authority of the ruling person is presented as the outcome of a long, sacred, and unchangeable tradition. 2. Charismatic authority, based on the belief in the extraordinary, superhuman, supernatural qualities of a leader. The leader is recognized for his or her exceptional religious, martial, healing, judicial, or other qualities. 3. Legal authority; more specifically, the obedience required by impersonal rules existing in the form of legal acts. Legal authority is the form most typical for modern society. Obedience is not required by specific human individuals, but by impersonal standards expressed in legal form. Ruling persons and their administrative apparatus are, in principle, subject to the same legal standards as other people (Weber, 1947, pp. 324 407). One area in which Max Weber differs from Karl Marx is in his approach to the questions of social inequality and stratification. While Marx and Marxism see the basis of inequality and stratification only in a single dimension — i.e., the economic Ideas of the Sociological “Fo un der s”

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dimension, determined by economic ownership — Weber introduces three dimensions: economic differences resulting in differentiation into classes; social differences in honor and prestige leading to differentiation of status (der Stand); and finally differences in the political life of society, in political parties, and groups of power (Gerth & Mills, 1958, pp. 180 194). In proposing the existence of more than one dimension of inequality and stratification in a system notably more complex and nuanced than that of Marxism, Weber is regarded as a forerunner of the contemporary multidimensional theory of stratification. Weber’s most famous work is The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (2002 [1904 1905]), often regarded as one of the strongest arguments against the interpretation of capitalism presented by Karl Marx. Let us recall that, for Marx, the origin of capitalism was addressed in terms of the expression “the original accumulation of capital.” According to Marx, capitalism appeared in connection with the emergence of a new social class, i.e., capitalists: rich people who used their wealth to buy raw materials, instruments, machines, factories, and manpower. Marx links the emergence of this affluent class with the “original accumulation of capital” and examines how this took place in England — the country which, in his view, was the first to experience the development of capitalism. Weber, however, views the circumstances of the emergence of capitalism differently than Marx. Capitalism, in his view, is not solely a question of the possession of capital, but could arise only at a moment in which a certain “spiritual” assumption necessary for its creation emerged. This spiritual presupposition of capitalism was the Protestant religion, especially its puritanical branch. Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was inspired by statistical findings that indicated the greatest expansion of capitalism took place in countries where Protestantism prevailed. On the basis of this concrete data, Weber arrived at the idea of attributing a crucial role to Protestantism. The essential features of the world permeated and shaped by this spirit of capitalism are voluntary asceticism, rationality, discipline, accuracy and consistency. One of the reasons

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underlying the emergence of capitalism is a new attitude to property. A desire for wealth, property or estate is, of course, hardly the prerogative of capitalism. Throughout historical development, people have sought property which brings them power and prestige. However, it was in the Protestant countries of North West Europe that a new element appeared — deferred consumption. The life of the founders of capitalism was not devotion to pomp and extravagance, but modest and ascetic. Protestants did not display their property for the admiration of others, but used it to invest in the further development of their businesses. In other words, Protestants did not consume their wealth, but transformed it into capital to expand production, thus establishing a trend that led to capitalism. Weber did not confine his interests in religion as a significant social phenomenon to the study of western Christianity alone. In his The Economic Ethics of World Religions he attempted a broad and systematic study of religion across the world, focusing on Confucianism, Taoism (Weber, 1989), Hinduism, and Buddhism (Weber, 1996). Through his analysis of these religions, Weber concluded that in themselves they do not create the conditions that could enable the development of industrial capitalism — as occurred in the West. The cause was not the “backwardness” of Eastern civilizations, but the presence of a different system of values than the ones predominant in Western Europe. Weber observes an ongoing process of rationalization within the Western world, and notes that the Occident (i.e., the West) alone had developed systematic science, and the rationality that prevailed in its philosophy, law, architecture, music, and religion. This rationalization had become the sphere of the capitalist economy, reflected in the process of bureaucratization, industrialization, and secularization that marked the western world. Such a conclusion could easily appear a one-sided celebration of Western rationality against the rest of the world, yet Weber’s own stance is notably more complex. Rationality, as he was well aware, has ambivalent consequences. On the one hand, it is the source of success, high productivity and wealth. On the other, it creates a new set of constraints and bonds. In this context, Weber notes Ideas of the Sociological “Fo un der s”

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that the life of modern man is trapped in an iron cage of rationality. Rationalization, Weber concludes, is a highly ambivalent process. It leads to the tendency to remove from the world God, religious belief, and all that is mysterious and supernatural, a process that he terms “disenchantment” (German: Entzauberung). For Weber, one of the most striking manifestations of rationalization in the modern world is the phenomenon of bureaucracy (Gerth & Mills, 1958, pp. 196 244). Bureaucracy — in the simplest sense of the word — is the “government of clerks“. Weber posited an ideal type of bureaucracy and bureaucratic procedure, where bureaucracy is described as a management unit whose work is characterized by consistency, accuracy and efficiency. The efficiency of bureaucracy lies in the fact that for all bureaucratic tasks there are rational instructions which must be followed. The problem with this, according to Weber, is that the functioning of bureaucracy is formal, impersonal, and dehumanized. Bureaucracy makes its decisions unemotionally, without taking into account human needs and fates. Here too we can see the tension between an appreciation of rationality in modern life and a strong awareness of its disadvantages that pervades the work of Weber — and indeed that of many other sociologists.

Digression on the Early rationalization of time Modernization has been considered by thinkers such as Michel Foucault or Anthony Giddens as the process of development of institutions coordinating the temporal, spatial and social dimensions of human action. The development of the temporal order of social reality occupied many thinkers even early in the 20th century. Karl Marx contemplated time as one of the fundamental factors in his economic-philosophical analyses. Georg Simmel considered time structures as conditioned by the movement of money and the corresponding forms of time consciousness. Werner Sombart drew attention to the fact that “modern capitalism” demanded a high degree of precision and reliability in the measurement of time, and this affected consciousness and

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behavior. For Lewis Mumford, the essential machine of the modern age was not the steam engine, but the clock. In his book Technics and Civilization (1934) we find the idea the medieval monks may be regarded as the pioneers of the modern relationship to time. According to Mumford, it was in the monasteries of the western lands that, after the long period of insecurity and bloody confusion following the collapse of the Roman Empire, there first appeared the desire for power and order of a non-military character. In opposition to the instability of the secular world the monasteries set up the iron discipline of their orders. These became the milieu of a strictly ordered, regular and punctual life hardly natural to humanity. Appealing to Coulton and Sombart, Mumford argues that what the Benedictines created was essentially a largescale working order, clearly the forerunner of modern capitalism: “their order undoubtedly removed the curse from work and their huge technical undertakings perhaps even overshadowed warfare and deprived it of part of its charm”. Mumford goes on to suggest that the monasteries even helped to give human enterprise a regular social measure of time and the rhythm of a machine (Mumford, 1934, p. 12 ff.). Mumford’s ideas were not entirely original. Sombart, for example, had already pointed out that in the Middle Ages the need to measure and divide up time had emerged only in the monasteries (Sombart, 1902 (II)), but he interpreted the requirement for precise time measurement primarily in the context of the development of accounting and systematic book-keeping, which emerged among Italian merchants and traders in the 14th and 15th centuries. Sombart regarded the rise of capitalism as a process in which the chief elements were the accumulation of capital and the appearance of a capitalist spirit, and he found the beginnings of this process in late-medieval Italy (this theory of the genesis of capitalism differs somewhat from that of Marx, for example). His emphasis on the importance of the formation of the “capitalist spirit”, and the complex long-term psychogenesis of capitalism is characteristic, since Sombart’s scholarship was distinctive for its efforts to correct the concept of the genesis of capitalism as Ideas of the Sociological “Fo un der s”

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formulated by Marx, by augmenting it with an analysis of the psychological basis of the process, and investigating the psychological forces that became the moving forces of economic development. (In this context we should note that Georg Simmel had a similar aim in his work, The Philosophy of Money, which he originally intended to call “The Psychology of Money” (Lenger, 1994, p. 123).) This tendency finds its fullest expression, of course, in Sombart’s contemporary, Max Weber, who carried on extensive discussions with Sombart in this regard. Sombart linked the acceleration of the development of capitalism primarily with the Renaissance and Jewry, while Weber connected it with the Reformation. The question of the moving forces in the expansion of modern capitalism was likewise, for Weber, not so much a matter of the origin of the capitalist method of making money (i.e., the original accumulation of capital) as of the development of the capitalist spirit (Weber, 2002 [1904 1905], 13 ff.). Weber conceived this spirit of capitalism as bearing the features of a certain historical type of mentality, combined with a certain ethical orientation and characteristic attitudes and modes of behavior. Among the essential features of the world penetrated and formed by this spirit were rationalization, discipline, calculability, and precision in the organization of affairs and treatment of time. Weber’s spirit of capitalism is characterized by continuous efforts in the service to which the individual is assigned (called), the subordination of individual needs to the background, the unceasing application of discipline and method, and a universal rationalistic organizing approach to all areas of life. The enemy with which the spirit of capitalism had to contend — as a particular style of life in the garb of an “ethic” and bound to norms — was the mode of feeling and acting that Weber called traditionalism (ibid., 22 ff.); man “naturally” does not want to make more and more money, but simply to live the life he is used to and to acquire as much as is necessary for this purpose. Weber’s concept of rationality was in many respects new and original. In contrast to the conventional attitudes of his time, Weber did not believe the western rationality of his period to be the only one possible. In his view the specific character of modern rationality had developed from earlier organizational

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forms at a particular degree of development. Contradicting ideas identifying religion with irrationality, Weber regarded religion as the bearer of its own rationality. Hence, for Weber, historical development was not the progress of an ever-advancing secular rationality but, on the contrary, that modern rationality had necessarily religious roots. In relation to other religions, he saw the unique character of Christianity in its tendency to active behavior. While he devoted his greatest attention to Protestantism, and specifically Calvinism, he believed that the roots of modern rationality went back significantly further, and thus also directed his studies at pre-reformation Catholicism. Calvinism — as a type of ascetic Protestantism — did not see man as master of his own destiny. The fate of every individual was pre-ordained by God and nobody could know whether he was predestined to salvation or to eternal damnation. In Weber’s view, it was this feeling of insecurity and doubt about one’s own destiny in eternity that stimulated strenuous activities on earth. In the success of his secular endeavors the Calvinist could see proof of God’s favor. Weber argued that the hallmark of Calvinist Puritan piety was an active “this-worldly” asceticism (innerweltliche Askese, i.e., inthe-world as opposed to “other-worldly”), based on the Calvinist belief in predestination. A rational-ascetic, disciplined and systematically organized way of life, involving continuous self-control, a life of self-denial and the subjection of all affections and sensuality to self-conscious, vigilant, and voluntary self-mastery — this was what distinguished the elect from the damned with their unregulated lives and attitude of surrender to the world. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber devoted a great deal of attention to English Puritanism (which had developed out of Calvinism), and especially to the views of one of its exponents, Richard Baxter. Baxter preached a gospel of hard, unremitting physical or intellectual work. God’s providence had assigned to each man a particular calling (in German: Beruf), which each had to recognize and labor in. For Baxter, wasting time was the worst of sins. No idle moments, but only active effort, served to multiply the glory of God, and each wasted hour Ideas of the Sociological “Fo un der s”

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undermined this work. Life was infinitely short and precious, and the loss of time spent on entertainment, “idle talk,” luxury, or even sleeping longer than necessary for health — 6 or at the most 8 hours — was morally despicable (ibid., p. 105). “Calling” or vocation and working on one’s calling were things that possessed a religious quality for Protestantism, and were the way to godly living. For Luther, the division of people into estates and callings was the direct expression of God’s will. Weber saw this idea of calling as one of the constituent elements of the modern capitalist spirit and modern culture (ibid., 39 ff.). A rational way of life based on the idea of calling was born from the spirit of Christian asceticism. Here, in Weber’s view, an important role had been played by Western monasticism. Weber regarded the monastic ethic as the forerunner of the Protestant ethic. He saw in the monasteries the model of a rationally managed agricultural concern, and in the monk the model of an economically disinterested individual who lives rationally according to a systematic division of time. The work ethos of Puritanism was for Weber a secular version of the ascetic ideals of the monastic life. Weber argues that even in the Middle Ages — and in many respects even in Antiquity — Christian asceticism was the bearer of rationalism. The first decisive breakthrough occurred with the emergence of the Western monastic way of life, as established in the Benedictine Order and later developed by the Cluniac and Cistercian Orders, and then, especially, the Jesuits. Monastic existence was subject to a systematically worked-out method for rational living, with the goal of overcoming the status naturae, suppressing the power of irrational instincts, escaping from dependence on the world, subordinating the self to the planned dictates of will, placing one’s conduct and thought under continuous control, working in the service of the kingdom of God, and thus achieving salvation (Weber, 1920, p. 116). For Weber, monks were the pioneers of a new, rational, and systematic way of life, the first westerners to live methodically according to a vocation, and organize life and time on the principle of ever-increasing self-control (Weber, 1972, p. 699). According to Weber, monastic asceticism contained the embryonic forms of that

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ethos which was later developed in Protestant asceticism. In this context, he quotes the assertion of Sebastian Franck that, Jeder Christ ein Mönch sein Leben lang. Of course, Weber characterized this asceticism as “other-worldly” (ausserweltliche Askese), while in the case of Protestantism, the asceticism was “this-worldly” (Weber, 1920, p. 119). Since the doctrine of predestination ruled out the possibility that the individual could achieve direct communication with God by his own efforts, the idea that had been the starting-point for the “other-worldly” asceticism of the monks, the only way of salvation that remained to Protestantism was that of work in an earthly calling. The principle of rational systematic monastic asceticism thus had to be carried into the world and its everyday economic and social life. The passionately serious inward-looking disposition which had once been devoted to monasticism was now reassigned to the pursuit of the ascetic ideal in secular life. Weber argued that the transfer of this asceticism from monastic cells to the life of the worldly calling, and its subsequent influence on secular morality, contributed to the building of the huge cosmos of the modern economic system — including the technical and economic conditions of machine production — which exerted a vast influence on the lifestyle of all individuals born into its mechanism. *** The monasticism that began to emerge in the West in the mid4th century had long-existed in the East; one can, therefore, regard it as in some respects an import. Nevertheless, from its inception, Western monasticism differed from its Eastern counterpart. The theologian and religious historian Adolf Harnack had already drawn attention to this difference prior to Weber. Harnack argued that the climatic conditions of the West partly dictated a rather different style of life than was usual in the East, but he credited the ideas of St. Augustine, with his doctrine of the City of God, with giving the Western Church its novel orientation (Harnack, 1895, p. 39), leading to a more active attitude to the world. Another key figure in the orientation of Western monasticism was Benedict of Nursia, who in 529 founded the Monastery at Monte Cassino and to whom is attributed authorship of the Rule of Saint Ideas of the Sociological “Fo un der s”

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Benedict (Regula Benedicti), which formed the basis of the monastic life.4 In both imaginative and academic literature monasteries have been beset by myths which have hindered real understanding of their function. As Réginald Grégoire has tellingly put it, the monastery cannot be regarded as an academy of science, nor as a paleographic institute, nor as agricultural concern, sanatorium, social center, or therapeutic community (Grégoire, Moulin, & Oursel, 1985, p. 194). The life of monks was and is characterized by the monotonous rhythm of everyday duties comprising two basic elements, work and holy reading (lectio divina), symbolized by the plough and the pen. According to Ernst Troeltsch, monks also recognized work as a means of training the self and improving concentration; for them it was a kind of driving wheel for the increasing application of method to life (Treiber & Steinert, 1980, p. 59). In the monasteries of the early Middle Ages, the day was divided by one nighttime and seven daytime religious services.5 The Rule of Saint Benedict firmly established not just the order of religious services, but also the activities in which the monks were supposed to engage during the day. It also stated the hours at which monks were to eat and even how they were to behave if they should come late to mass or to the table. Eviatar Zerubavel is a 4. The qualitative shift from solitary, anchoritic life to the monastic way of life was represented by the emergence of the cenobits, founded by Pachomius (287 347). The importance of Pachomius lies in the introduction of regular common meals, common morning and evening prayers and a common household (Treiber & Steinert, 1980, pp. 56 59). The Benedictine Order was to a certain extent inspired by the older Pachomian Order and the Eastern Order of St Basil. 5. The measurement of time in the early Middle Ages was a theme studied by Gustav Bilfinger, whose work of 1892 is still regarded as exemplary. Bilfinger shows that the division of time into 12 daytime and 12 nighttime hours, the length of which varied with seasonal changes in the relative length of days and nights, was already known in antiquity. In addition to this division of time, the Roman empire also used the division of day and night into quarters (known to this day as the four watches of the night); the day was divided into four sections of three hours, called tertia, sexta, and nona. In his study, Bilfinger describes the further development of the measurement of time, leading up to the medieval division of the day into seven canonical hours: Matutina (before sunrise), Prima (early morning), Tertia (later morning), Sexta (noon), Nona (afternoon), Vespera (sunset), and Completorium (late evening) (Bilfinger, 1969 [1892], pp. 1 5). Only with the invention of the mechanical clock, which (as Sombart had shown) became widespread from the 14th century, did the measurement of time through regular, uniform time periods come to pass.

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contemporary scholar who in 1980 posited a connection between the Benedictine ethic and the modern way of scheduling. He argued that the Benedictines were clearly the first people to establish a regularity of schedule not only on the basis of the calendar, in terms of years, months, and weeks, but at the level of days and hours. Zerubavel regards it as more than likely that the temporal regularity characteristic of modern life had its origin in the Benedictine monasteries and the division of the monks’ daily schedule (horarium) into canonical hours.6 According to Zerubavel, the Benedictine horarium is significant as the original model for all subsequent western time schedules (Zerubavel, 1980, p. 158).7 The monastic time schedule also attracted the attention of the contemporary medievalist Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum, who regards the theories formulated by Mumford and Zerubavel as too radical. Dohrn-van Rossum criticizes the “mechanistic” picture of the monasteries which sees them as the prototype of the modern factory. In his view, assertions about “iron discipline,” or the “mechanical” or clockwork rhythm of monastic life — even if intended simply as metaphors — lead to misapprehension. He has modified notions of monastic discipline by suggesting that the much-discussed precision and punctuality of monastic behavior in the daily schedule were not related to the kind of abstract points of time presented by a clockwork machine, but were nevertheless linked to points of time in the sequential rhythm of collective behavior (Dohrn-van Rossum, 1996, p. 42). 6. It is debatable to what extent it is justified to consider the question of daily schedules, as, for example, Zerubavel does, without considering other time dimensions, which in the case of medieval man were represented by cyclical “natural time” through the four seasons, and a linear “time of salvation,” linked to the idea of the Last Judgement (Le Goff, 1977, pp. 46 65). 7. Forerunners of the modern time schedule can also be found at a later period in court environments as well, which while not ascetic in nature, were certainly disciplined. One of the best-known examples is the schedule of the day at the court of Louis XIV, which began with the king’s lever at 8 o’clock. It continued with morning mass and work. At 1 o’clock, there was diner and afterwards a walk or hunt. At 5 o’clock in the evening the king and courtiers would return to the palace. In the evening, from 7 to 9, there was an appartement — informal entertainment. The end of the day was marked by the grand couvert and coucher (Kathe, 1981, 106 ff.).

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Michel Foucault, whose work is concerned with the problem of the transformation of the mechanisms of power in the course of the social modernizing process, mentions monasteries in the context of the development of disciplinary technologies (Foucault, 1979, 293 ff.). Randall Collins, in his book Weberian Sociological Theory, emphasizes the entrepreneurial role of monasteries and especially the influence of the Cistercian Order on the economic development of Europe (Collins, 1986, pp. 52 54). In the work of Hubert Treiber and Heinz Steinert, we find the idea of a certain kinship between monastic and factory discipline (Wahlverwandschaft von Kloster — und Fabrikdisziplin). Both authors devote attention to the question of (a) the precise allocation of daily time, (b) the creation of detailed rules for individual activities, and (c) spatial (architectural) arrangements serving the aim of the appointed goal. According to Treiber and Steinert, the kinship between the monastery and the factory is not something that should be considered on the level of real historical development, but is above all a matter of the similarities of certain structures and techniques for the systematic application of discipline and method to life. At the same time, both authors suggest that the example of the monasteries may have genuinely played an inspirational role in the field of industrial production in the secularizing phase at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries (Treiber & Steinert, 1980, 66 ff.). *** Although monasticism was, in a certain sense, in a position “marginal” to life, it nevertheless made an important contribution to social development. It would certainly be no exaggeration to claim that the monastery was a model for secular life in more ways than simply in relation to time discipline. It played an inspirational role in other respects as well. The form of modern society has been molded by long-term social processes, most of which were unplanned and not the products of design. On the other hand, there have also been lines of development of a rather different kind, for example, in the field of human knowledge. Many generations of thinkers and reformers have devoted their efforts to experiments in identifying and

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realizing ideal forms of human coexistence in perfect, planned societies. They have formulated a range of diverse visions, ideas, and projects,8 in which social utopias have loomed large. Utopian ideas, which represent one of the basic features of European thought, were influenced by the reality of monastic life. Reality has usually entered into utopian thinking in two ways. On the one hand, it is always possible to find in any utopia — to a greater or lesser extent — traces of the political and social environment of its creator (whether consciously inserted or not): this reality, after all, has usually been the motivation for the formulation of a utopian vision. On the other hand, reality may also serve as an inspiration in the positive sense of the word (e.g., Plato’s vision was influenced by Sparta, and More’s was possibly influenced by the Inca Empire, Löffler, 1972, p. 32). The historian Ferdinand Seibt, who uses the concepts of order, planning, and hope (Ordnung, Planung und Hoffnung) to characterize utopian thought, speaks of monasteries as places where planned thinking was cultivated for centuries, even before it was considered in modern thought (Seibt, 1982, p. 258). The monastic environment supplied the creators of utopias with a number of arguments9 (sometimes monasteries are directly identified as the places where a utopia was realized) and also became a stimulus for attempts to implement utopias.10 The anticlerical utopias which emerged from the 18th century, however, pushed this 8. Maurice de Gandillac, author of the book Geneses de la modernité (de Gandillac, 1992), is one of the contemporary authors to have dealt with this problem. 9. Let us remember, for example, Tommas Campanella, who in his treatise The City of the Sun (La Città del Sole) argued that it was a matter of introducing customs already practiced by monks in the monastic environment (Campanella, 1998 [1602]). In Campanella, we can find a tendency that is also characteristic for other Utopian writers: the tendency to organize society on the model of a monastery, making monastic discipline — which individual monks accept more or less voluntarily — an obligatory rule for the whole society. In this respect, it has sometimes been pointed out that utopias have foreshadowed authoritarian or totalitarian regimes. This comment should, however, be accepted only with the qualification that utopian visions cannot be retrospectively judged simply by contemporary experience. 10. One well-known example is that of the Jesuit experiment in Paraguay (the state founded in 1610 which existed up to 1768), which included a series of features of Utopian societies, especially Campanella’s solar state (Löffler, 1972, p. 39).

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source of inspiration into the background and the subsequent development of utopian thought was dominated by secular visions which allowed it to be all but forgotten.

Sociology as a Science about Social Facts In France, the discipline of sociology can be said to originate with Emile Durkheim. Through his work Durkheim laid the theoretical and organizational foundations of an entire school and tradition of French sociology. He had significant influence not only on the field of sociology, but also on social and cultural anthropology, religious studies, history, and other humanistic disciplines. In contrast to Weber, Durkheim is a representative of sociological holism. Holism is the philosophical view that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and has specific qualities that cannot be explained from its components when taken in isolation. Durkheim’s way of thinking later gave rise to the sociological interpretations of structuralism, functionalism, and the theory of social systems. Emile Durkheim was born in 1858 in the small French town of Epinal, into an orthodox Jewish family. He studied at the prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris (1879 1882), working as a secondary school teacher from 1882 to 1887. In 1887, he defended his doctoral dissertation on the topic of the social division of labor, and assumed a post at the University of Bordeaux. In 1898, he founded a journal with the title L’Année Sociologique (Sociological Yearbook). The group of researchers that formed around this journal soon emerged as the French or the “Durkheimian” sociological school. From 1904 to 1916, he was professor at the Sorbonne, at the University of Paris, and died in 1917. From Durkheim’s bibliography, four books are essential: The Division of Labor in Society (Durkheim, 1964 [1893]), The Rules of Sociological Method (Durkheim, 1966 [1895]), Suicide (Durkheim, 1963 [1897]), and The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (Durkheim, 1968 [1912]).

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Durkheim’s sociology is based on Comte’s positivism. Durkheim agreed with the positivist requirement of achieving the same accuracy and reliability in sociology expected from the natural sciences. In Durkheim, we find two conceptions of sociology; one of these is broader than the other. In the broader concept, sociology has two components: social morphology and social physiology. Social morphology is a kind of “anatomy” of human society, with two basic components: social geography (i.e., dealing with the spatial issues of human life) and demography (dealing with the biological reproduction of the population). Social physiology is the second part of sociology, covering religion, morality, law, economic life, language, and art. It can be said that Durkheim himself developed sociology only in the narrower sense, as social physiology: his sociology is a science concerned with economic life, collective consciousness, religion, and morality. Emil Durkheim belonged to the pioneering generation of sociologists who had to struggle for the acceptance of their subject and its independent existence. He had to explain and defend the significance of the sociological enterprise in a wide range of controversies, working from the assumption that the establishment of any science requires an accurately defined area of study (distinct from other sciences), and a definite specific method. Crucial for the development of Durkheim’s opinions about sociology were his polemical exchanges with another French sociologist, Gabriel Tarde, a representative of psychologism in sociology. Against Tarde, Durkheim tried to identify a subject of sociology distinct from the subject of psychology. For him, sociology possessed its own subject of research beyond individual psyches, which was society as a whole. Durkheim understood society as a peculiar kind of reality — not simply the sum total of individuals, but a larger, and indeed autonomous subject. Furthermore, society held primacy over individuals. Durkheim’s The Division of Labor in Society, introduced an important historical sociological concept based on an evolutionary perspective (Durkheim, 1964 [1893]). In it he distinguishes two types of societies, which in fact represent evolutionary stages: Ideas of the Sociological “ Founders ”

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modern society, a “society of organic solidarity,” and pre-modern society, a “society of mechanical solidarity.” Mechanical solidarity (ibid., pp. 70 110) connects human individuals through social ties seen as automatic, unquestionable, and inevitable. This type of solidarity corresponds to a particular type of social structure, which Durkheim terms “segmental.” Society is divided into segments — small units of people with a low degree of interdependence. Such segments may be human groups, tribes, or villages. Individual segments are usually (almost) autonomous. Dominant in their structure are relationships based on blood: immediate family ties and kinship relations. Within such segments there is little division of labor, and each individual is expected to perform more or less the same tasks. The main bond or link of mechanical solidarity is the presence of collective consciousness, especially shared and pervasive religious faith. Traditions, and adherence to traditional standards, rule over this type of society. Moreover, without much differentiation between the beliefs and expected actions of society’s members, the personality of the human individual is absorbed by the collective, typically resulting in the underdevelopment of personality characteristics, a widespread similarity between individuals, and a lack of individuality and individualism. In a society of mechanical solidarity, dominant norms are maintained through “punitive law” and repression. In the course of evolutionary development (associated with increasing density of population), local boundaries break down. A deeper differentiation of functions and division of labor occurs, and with it a differentiation of other social relations. As a result of this process, the collective consciousness (that is to say, religion) loses its social power. The mental and moral sameness of individuals disappears. In Durkheim’s analysis, it is the development of the division of labor that allows people’s individual characteristics to develop. With greater specialization in work, everyone can choose the area of their endeavors. The gateway for the utilization of individual human talents is opened and collective consciousness is no longer a limitation. The cohesion of society is now based on cooperation, which ensues from, and creates a necessity for, the division of labor. Everyone does a particular kind of work, and

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cannot exist without the cooperation of others. Thus what emerges is what Durkheim termed “organic solidarity” (ibid., pp. 111 132), existing as a spontaneous impulse rather than imposed through strict cultural codes. In a society with organic solidarity, social norms are lent authority not by punitive threats but through cooperative or restitutive law. We should note here the similar yet differently conceived interpretation of historical development formulated by the German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies in his work Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (Tönnies, 1957 [1887]). A contemporary of Durkheim, Tönnies (1855 1936) set forth a comparison of two types of collective life. The first is Gemeinschaft, most accurately translated as “community.” The second type is Gesellschaft, corresponding to “society.” Gemeinschaft (community) is not only a historically older social form, but in fact one that emerged naturally. In contrast with Durkheim’s ascription of an “organic” quality to later, more individually based social orders, this natural Gemeinschaft is a community of blood, land, and spirit which sees its origin in kinship, such as family, clan, or tribe; its typical form is the village, where customs, traditions, and beliefs dominate. In the historical process of social evolution, Gemeinschafts decay, and their place is taken by Gesellschafts (societies). The process of transition is accelerated by new technology, which creates new, artificial relationships, and industrial mechanized production. Tönnies says that society, in comparison with community, is an artificial creation. In a world of technological separation, the basic link between people in society is created by money. As a consequence, all relations between people in society have an alienated character. Tönnies, unlike Durkheim, emphasizes and praises the quality of life in Gemeinschaft, and criticizes the alienated character of relationships typical for modern society. Durkheim, on the contrary, evaluates contemporary capitalist society as a positive development, and ranks it higher than societies based on mechanical solidarity. If contemporary society has any deficiencies or pathologies (for which Durkheim introduces Ideas of the Sociological “ Founders ”

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the term “anomie,” Durkheim, 1964 [1893], 353 ff.), these are not fatal, because it is possible to remove them. Durkheim based his sociology on the positivism of Auguste Comte. Evidence of this intellectual influence is found in his Rules of Sociological Method (Durkheim, 1966 [1895]). Here, Durkheim argues that the subject of sociology — the unique and clearly defined entity that makes the field a science — is what he calls social facts. Social facts are generally characterized by two main features: (1) A social fact has a supra-individual nature. It exists outside human individuals and it enters the consciousness of the individual as something external and independent of his will. (2) Social facts can exercise pressure on the human individual, and the individual is aware of being subject to this pressure. A social fact is therefore supra-individual and equipped with coercive power, thus differing from phenomena that are purely psychological (ibid., pp. 1 13). The fundamental social fact, according to Durkheim, is “‘collective consciousness.” Other social facts include religion, language, law, morals, or fashion. Durkheim says that sociology must also have its own specific methodology, including the following principles (ibid., 14 ff.):

• Social facts cannot be explained by facts of another kind, by invoking biological, psychological, or any other types of facts, only by other social facts.

• Social facts should be analyzed from the perspective of the existing independence of individuals.

• The basic empirical evidence on which sociology should be based cannot be individual biographies, diaries, letters, opinions, etc., because they represent only individual views of reality. For validity, evidence must be supra-individual in nature, reflecting the collective consciousness, such as legal norms, ethical norms, religious dogmas, political programs, or the like. In his book Suicide, Durkheim (1963 [1897]) distinguishes four types of suicides: The first is egoistic suicide, where the person

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carries out suicide for personal reasons. Altruistic suicide, the opposite of egoistic suicide, is defined as when a person commits suicide to save others, e.g., self-sacrifice in some common interest. Fatalistic suicide, the third, is caused by a social event that overwhelms a person as ineluctable “fate.” Finally, there is anomic suicide, arising from the fact that the order of society is in decay or chaos, and people are suffering as a result. What makes this book interesting? It is widely held that suicide is an individual act — an individual’s decision to end their life. In this light, few would think that suicide could be a social or mass phenomenon, a subject for sociology. However, there is one problem: in some societies there are significantly more suicides than in others. Durkheim based his analysis of suicides on the study of statistics. The knowledge that the number of suicides varies from society to society led him to see the problem of suicide as a social phenomenon. And this highly empirical, highly quantitative finding shows that the number of suicides must in some way be connected with the situation in society. It is also in his work Suicide that Durkheim introduces the concept of anomie, now one of the basic concepts in sociology. Derived from the Greek word Nomos (English: Law), the concept of anomie refers to a situation in which laws lose their force — that is, laws in the broadest sense of guidelines to social conduct. Under anomie, social values and norms lose their validity and importance, resulting in a breakdown in social order. In a situation of anomie, individuals find themselves in difficult positions because they lose the grounds for their decisions and actions — a situation that can lead to anomic suicide. In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Durkheim (1968 [1912]) used the anthropological knowledge then available to analyze the religion of Australian Aborigines. In this simple form of religion, he assumed, he could explore all the basic features and functions of the phenomenon, which in later types of religion appear in more complex and complicated forms. Durkheim concluded that religion has a social origin (ibid., pp. 9 20), and equally a social nature. In essence, religion is a kind of expression of social life in spiritual terms, where, despite its orientation toward religious subjects, it is society that is actually worshiped and glorified, Ideas of the Sociological “ Founders ”

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alongside the social nature of our lives. Religion is a form of collective consciousness, indeed the most important form of collective consciousness. Durkheim introduced a number of highly significant sociological concepts in this book which are still valid today: concepts such as sacred (i.e., holy) and profane (i.e., secular) (ibid., pp. 37 42), ritual (ibid., p. 36), and collective representation (ibid., p. 16). The concept of sacredness is related to the practice of highlighting certain things and phenomena and separating them from ordinary, “profane” life. Though in themselves material, they are assigned a religious-sacred nature. As a result, the lives of people are divided into two realms: sacred and profane. Durkheim was interested in the question of how the relations between people are maintained and strengthened — what factors contribute to the formation of social solidarity? In this context, Durkheim attributed great importance to emotions in the form of ties and rituals. He showed the fundamental importance of collective action in which people idealize and venerate that which unites them. Most often these are religious or political ceremonies, and rituals.11 The concept of collective representation indicates how images and symbols (e.g., of a religious or ideological nature) represent society and its collective life. A further achievement of Emil Durkheim lay in founding the journal L’Année Sociologique (Sociological Yearbook) in 1898, around which a group of researchers gathered to form the so-called French or Durkheimian sociological school. Two representatives of this sociological school are particularly worthy of discussion in their own right: Marcel Mauss and Maurice Halbwachs. Mauss (1872 1950) was not only a scholarly collaborator of Emile Durkheim but also his nephew. Focusing on ethnology and sociology, Mauss’s mostly widely reflected on work was Essays about the Gift (Mauss, 2002 [1924]), in which he deals with the phenomenon 11. Sociologists in the later 20th century, such as Erving Goffman or Randall Collins, were inspired by Durkheim to study not just religious rituals, but secular rituals — the rituals of everyday life, such as acts of mutual greeting, attention and respect, courtesy, conversation, etc. Like Durkheim, Goffman (1967) and Collins (2004) see rituals as a basic mechanism for strengthening social solidarity.

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of gift and donation, examining a few selected areas: Polynesia, Melanesia, and the Pacific Northwest. Mauss sees gifts and donations as a basic social process and structure for creating and maintaining social order. Halbwachs, meanwhile, has a special significance to historical sociology as the first sociologist systematically to examine the problem of collective memory.

A Digression on Collective Memory Today, interest in the subject of memory in sociology and social science arises from a variety of sources. One is the fact that we live in a time of remembrance of war crimes and catastrophes in the annals of human history, as generations of witnesses to events gradually pass away, and other, later crimes are seen through the lens of the institutions which grew up to deal with them (the Hague, the UN, among others). There is also reflection on the contemporary state of European culture, discussion of modern and post-modern spirits, transformational processes in central and eastern Europe and the search for identity in other parts of the world, all spurred on by new electronic media and research into artificial intelligence which place memory at the center of professional attention. In this context, history meets sociology as researchers try to analyze the memories of different human groups, nations, societies, and transnational bodies. The oft-repeated expression from George Orwell in 1984 increasingly appears relevant, and in its circularity as tantalizing as the question of memory itself: Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs (1877 1945), who dealt with questions of memory in several works including a book, Social Frames of Memory (1994 [1925]), and a study, The Legendary Topography of the Gospels in the Holy Land (1941), was the first sociologist systematically to engage in the study of memory. Halbwachs’s final publication devoted to the subject was the book Collective Memory, published from his manuscripts after World War II (1980 [1950]). As a member of the resistance movement Ideas of the Sociological “ Founders ”

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Halbwachs was arrested by the Nazis during World War II and died in 1945 in Buchenwald. The concept of collective memory, which represents the core of his writings, evidently contains traces of the influence of his two most important teachers, the aforementioned Emil Durkheim and the philosopher Henri Bergson, to whose work we now shall turn. In Bergson’s philosophy the central idea is “duration” — durée (Bergson, 2013 [1889], 1982 [1896]). A frequently mentioned example of this duration is melody — or rather, tones which link together in melody. Bergson understands duration as a continuous change in time, where the central role is played by memory. Thanks to memory the separate tones that we register can link together to enable us to hear a melody. Every ego, according to Bergson, gathers its past to it like an avalanche sweeping up snow. Everywhere something lives, he postulates, there lies an open protocol book; time writes on its pages (Bergson, 1930 [1907]). Memory is a prerequisite to consciousness, duration, and time, ensuring that we are ourselves and understand things around us. For Halbwachs, Bergson was thought provoking, but under Durkheim’s influence he abandoned such individualism and aimed his research interest in another direction, at social reality. Halbwachs was clearly influenced by the “sociologism” of Durkheim’s School, perceiving social reality as specific to the individual, and nonassignable. Durkheim clearly distinguished individual and collective levels of consciousness. By grouping and combining individual consciousnesses something new arises: “The group thinks, feels, and acts quite differently from the way in which its members would were they isolated” (Durkheim, 1966 [1895], p. 104). Collective consciousness cannot be extrapolated on the basis of knowledge of an individual psyche. Further to this, the social conditionality of memory plays a significant role in Halbwachs’ theoretical writings — clearly a result of Durkheim’s influence. Individual human memory can exist only as a consequence of the fact that collective memory exists. Halbwachs makes the radical claim that memory results from the activity of the brain and thus an individual growing up in absolute isolation would

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have no memory, as this depends on the process of socialization. Halbwachs distinguishes between individual and collective memory; for him individual memory is a social phenomenon as well. Individuals, strictly speaking, are only perceptions. Memories (including those of a personal character) have their origin in the thinking of the group, in communication and interaction, and in this framework they are passed on. Collective life is both the source of memories and the concepts through which these memories are embodied (Halbwachs, 1980 [1950]). Memory, Halbwachs avers, constitutes, functions, and reproduces itself within certain social frameworks, as memories are fixed and drawn upon (Halbwachs, 1994 [1925]). These frameworks also determine the significance of what we recall (examples include the calendar and the Catholic system of saints-days). Halbwachs’ theory of social frameworks also explains the process of forgetting. If a subject remembers something within a certain framework, as a certain present stored as the past, then he ultimately forgets what such a framework does not include. Forgetting then relates to the modification or disappearance of the relevant framework. The group that is the bearer of a collective memory aims — according to Halbwachs — to create and secure for itself sites which will serve for holding related memories. These sites are the symbols of its identity. Memory thus requires space and tends to spatialization. In his study of the legendary gospel topography of the Holy Land, Halbwachs (1941) documents how groups can enter into a certain symbolic society through its spaces even if they are in practice separated from them. Another important aspect of collective memory is its reconstructive capacity. This means that memory includes reconstructive elements so that the image of the past is not immutable. In the course of time the past is re-organized and new events or alteration bring new views of the past, and therefore its restructuring. A remarkable contribution to this theme of reconstruction can be found in the writing of American philosopher and sociologist George Herbert Mead (1863 1931). He devotes attention to the reconstituting function of mind in the sense in which this problem Ideas of the Sociological “ Founders ”

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appears in pragmatic philosophy. The point is that human imagination and its sense of significance in the present, linked as they are with the past and the future, are continually changing according to newly emerging events as these place what happened, or indeed might happen, in a new light. After the subject encounters fresh experience, it revises the past, looks at it differently, and likewise refashions future conduct and expectation. We touch now upon the question of how it is actually possible that something which once definitely and irrevocably occurred is not fixed but on the contrary mutable. Mead perceives that we are used to reading the past as something irrevocable, so he emphasizes that it is also revocable (Mead, 1959). Past events, as they unfolded — frequently without our efforts — are irrevocable. Nevertheless they are revocable in the sense that their significance to us or our perception of them can change when we are confronted with new problems and experiences. The past is irrevocable in the sense that we cannot change or undo things which have happened; but as far as their significance is concerned, as they are stored in, produced by and retrieved from the memory, the past is revocable and consequently as hypothetical as the future (Mead, 1936, p. 416), being continuously transformed into different “pasts” in accordance with the prevailing present. American sociologist Peter L. Berger refers to the same theme in the book Invitation to Sociology (Berger, 1963, pp. 56 57). He says we reconstruct the past in accordance with our present views, determining what is significant, what to draw on and what to forget. Common sense is mistaken in thinking that the past is solid and unchanging, in contrast to the present. On the contrary, the past is plastic, pliable, and ever-changing in relation to the present, as we endlessly reinterpret it. The big emotional storms of the past may seem retrospectively a little light childish excitement; once-mighty people may appear to have been dull fools, and proud milestones become mere disquieting episodes. Memories can even be forced out from the memory contrary to one’s wishes. Memory is therefore characterized by selectiveness, by the displacement of unpleasant ordeals and experiences or the exiling of certain themes (i.e., structural amnesia), while in social reality,

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we encounter the rewriting of individual biographies, actively making new myths and reviving old resentments. For the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann (2012, pp. 162 163), memory is linked with a curious paradox. His system theory posits the key aspect of memory not in remembering but forgetting, which he connects with the reduction of complexity. For each social and psychical system, the world is complex and they owe their existence to the fact that they reduce this complexity. The reduction of complexity is therefore a fundamental life strategy of systems. Something similar is proposed in a slightly different context by the French researcher Tzvetan Todorov, who says that memory is never simply the opposite of forgetting. Memory is rather the interaction of the two poles of “deleting” (forgetting) and “saving.” The complete reproduction of the past is absolutely impossible, because memory entails a certain “selection.” In this regard it is very questionable to associate “memory,” for instance, with the ability of computers to store information, because in this case the organic side of the memory, i.e., “selection,” is missing. Current researchers into the subject of memory include the Egyptologist Jan Assmann, author of the book The Cultural Memory (1992), dealing with the issue of early cultures. However, his works also display a distinct sociological erudition and without doubt they contribute to the study of memory. In terms of what Habwachs specified as the collective memory, Assmann (1992, pp. 20 21) differentiates four specific areas: Mimetic Memory, which relates to the field of social action and is connected with the fact that we learn negotiation through imitation. Assmann states that despite the existence of written instructions and guides, negotiation is something which cannot be fully codified in this way. Extensive areas of negotiation remain based on customs, habits, and so-called mimetic tradition. The Memory of Things is linked to possessions in which people store their ideas of purposefulness, comfort and beauty: crockery, tools, clothes, furniture, houses, means of transport etc. Ideas of the Sociological “ Founders ”

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Assmann says that the world of things contains a time index pointing to various layers of the past. Communicative Memory is passed on by means of speech in interpersonal communication. Cultural Memory is linked with the fact that the communication system creates external fields (kinds of external storage spaces), in which information and communications are stored in coded form. The existence of cultural memory is conditioned by the existence of certain institutional frameworks and requires specialists who keep records in the accepted code. Cultural memory also represents a field which the three previously mentioned types of memory penetrate and operate in. For cultural memory, the remembered past is significant but not factual. In this sense, even a myth may be real at the level at which it is recalled and glorified. The relationship between media and memory was dealt with by Jan Assmann and Assmann (1994), and Assmann (2011). A key role in the development of social memory, according to these authors, is played by the evolution of media, in which phases of oral transmission, writing, and audio-visual media can be distinguished.12 In recent decades, French scholars, especially, have set the tone of research into collective memory.13 In sociology, Namer (1987, 2000) has been instrumental in rediscovering and finding contemporary applications for the work of Maurice Halbwachs, and he emphasizes the plurality of forms of collective group memory and shows how this concept can become the subject of sociological research. Danièle Hervieu-Léger, the author of La religion pour mémoire, departs from the premise that every religion encompasses in itself a specific activation of collective memory (Hervieu-Léger, 12. Elena Esposito (2002) identifies, in connection with media development, four types of memory: divinatoric memory, rhetorical memory, memory as culture and memory as a network. 13. In the United States, Jeffrey K. Olick (2007) in particular is currently developing topics of research in the politics of memory.

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1993). The philosopher Paul Ricoeur, in his book La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli, examines the relationship between experience and historical memory from a historical philosophical perspective, including issues of responsibility for the past, guilt, and space for forgiveness (Ricoeur, 2000). Historian Pierre Nora’s work overlaps the field of sociological research, meanwhile. Inspired by Proust and Freud as well as Bergson and Halbwachs, Nora is principally concerned with the French national memory. He is known thanks to his project Sites of Memory (Les Lieux de mémoire, Nora, 1984, 1986a, 1986b, 1986c, 1992a, 1992b, 1992c), in which he endorses Halbwach’s conception, understanding collective memory as a construct of social, political, national, and religious groups. However, what is fundamental for him is not the fact that this memory is communicated, but that it is manifested in specific spaces — in the sites of memory. The primary object of Nora’s interest is the study of sites of memory, in a topographical and symbolic sense, in which, as he puts it, collective memory “crystallises.” These can be buildings, monuments, cemeteries, streets, squares, symbolic sites connected with anniversaries and celebrations, but also places of memory understood in a broader sense, which could include, for instance, acts of remembrance or official textbooks of history. An oral history method is used by Tzvetan Todorov in the French context. Todorov is known for his research on human behavior in extreme situations in World War II. His findings show that memory is “endangered,” “vulnerable” can be “misused.” Todorov ascribes significance to the link between memory and power, a kind of variation on the theme of knowledge and power developed by Michel Foucault in France. The tyrannies of the 20th century, according to Todorov, understood that “gaining territories and human beings occurs through gaining information and communications” (Todorov, 1998, p. 91). Therefore, they press for the systematic mastery of memory to such a degree that they have control even over its “most secret corners.” The most important strategy in this process is the “deleting” of memory — i.e., brainwashing. Even contemporary democracies are not immune from the danger of the loss of memory and oblivion. Ideas of the Sociological “ Founders ”

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The fast pace of information consumption leads us to the situation where we set it aside as quickly as it comes; memory in this case is not endangered by deleting but by information surplus. Yet this “less severe way is eventually more effective because it does not displease us and on the contrary makes voluntary elements of the process towards oblivion” (ibid., p. 93), and achieves the same end, according to Todorov, at which totalitarian regimes aimed — to the “rule of barbarism”, lethargy, loss of curiosity, and contented oblivion.

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Part

Systems, Structures, and Functions

IV

In sociological thinking, we find the long-term influence of certain thought patterns associated with certain metaphors and certain language. In this chapter, we will encounter terms such as “social system,” “social mobility,” and “social capital”: words which form part of everyday life and are the backdrop to politics and public debate. It is important to realize how such language took hold, often following on from some foundational metaphor. One such influential metaphor is the image of society as a living body. The understanding of social phenomena in a biological way, associated with a particular projection of the properties of living organisms with their individual parts, can be traced to Aristotle, who understood the polis as an organism where human individuals represent individual organs in relation to the biological body. This metaphor has recurred in successive iterations. In the teachings of the Church Fathers, there is the notion of ecclesiastic communion as the Body of Christ (Kantorowicz, 1967, pp. 194 206). In medieval thinking, the individual components of society were compared to body parts, with social layers as its limbs. Anthropomorphic, gender, and even zoomorphic metaphors were used in the geographic symbolism of the 16th and 17th centuries (e.g., Turkey was characterized as masculine, Ireland as virgin; Suranyi, 2009). The holistic understanding of social formations was also supported by visualizations in the form of geographical maps, in which the metaphor

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of the body was extended to the identification of places with body parts, for example, the head, heart, and so on (one notable example is the view of Europe as virgin in the biblical geography atlas of Heinrich Bunting Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae, first printed in 1581 in Helmstedt). In the Middle Ages, the vision of God as a geometrician, a great engineer who created the universe according to precise mathematical and geometrical laws, was already commonplace. Later, during the Enlightenment, Voltaire characterized God as a watchmaker and Julien Offray de La Mettrie likened the biological body to a machine (L’Homme plus que Machine from 1748). Thus, the way was cleared for society to be conceived as a machine entailing (social/state) machinery which — in opposition to the idea of an organic whole — resembled mechanical gears, a kind of dehumanized, alienated mechanism. Such thoughts began to be broached in the 18th century, so, for example, social circumstances were said to be determined by the geographic and climatic conditions in which the social body was situated (the influence of the geographical environment on the internal arrangement of society and its functioning was stressed by Charles-Louis de Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws in 1748). In the 19th century, “eugenics” (coined by the English scientist and statistician Francis Galton) gradually developed as a method for cultivating and refining the “bio-fund” of society, an approach greatly compromised by its ties to contemporary racialanthropological theories. The analogy between the society and the body was still applied in the work of Albert Schäffle, author of the four-part work Bau und Leben des sozialen Körpers (1875 1878), but was transformed into the concept of the social organism by the end of the 19th century, most notably by Herbert Spencer. Among the defenders of such sociology were René Worms (who in 1896 published Organise et société), Jacques Novicow, and especially Paul von Lilienfeld, for whom society was a living being with all the functions and maladies with which living organisms are endowed (Levine, 1995). At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Emile Durkheim, already mentioned as a founder-thinker of sociology, galvanized the field with his holistic approach, an approach nevertheless in

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accordance with the notion of society-as-body outlined above. In relation to medicine and the natural sciences, Durkheim distinguished “social morphology” — connected with demography and social geography — from social physiology (Durkheim, 1953 [1895]), relating to vital phenomena such as religion, morality, law, economics, language, and art. During the 20th century the term “organism” was replaced with the concept of “system,” which has been in general use since World War II.

The Social System and Evolution A word common to modern societies across many languages, the word “system” is of Greek origin. Originally, the Hellenic term “systema” embodied the ideas of grouping, unification, and wholes. It was only later, in the 18th and 19th centuries, that the idea of “system” as a certain order or ordering emerged. Today, in the context of sociology, we understand a “system” as a structured, dynamic entity that operates and exists in time. The sociologists of the 19th century, such as Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, did not speak of a social system, but instead used the term “social organism.” It was only in the 20th century that the concept of the social organism in sociology fell into disuse, because of its excessive biological connotations and was replaced with the term “social system.” Systemic theory is by nature holistic. The great boom in the currency of the concept “system” took place in the 20th century, largely thanks to two personalities: Ludwig von Bertalanffy, the founder of general systems theory and Norbert Wiener, the founder of cybernetics. Von Bertalanffy (1901 1972), a biologist, replaced the concept of a closed organism within the life sciences with the idea of an open system. Later, after World War II, he created a general theory of systems intended to provide a universal theoretical approach applicable to all sciences, both natural and human (Laszlo, 1972). Meanwhile, Norbert Wiener (1894 1964) was the brilliant mathematician who created and named a new science — cybernetics — about the selfcontrol and regulation of complex dynamic entities — that is, Syst ems , Str uc tur es, and Funct ions

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systems. The inspiration of Bertalanffy and Wiener was reflected in sociology, particularly in the work of American sociologist Talcott Parsons. Before we speak about Parsons, it is necessary to discuss Herbert Spencer and his theory of the social organism, which formed the precursor and intellectual basis of the theory of the social system. It was Spencer who elaborated the analogy between biological organisms and social organisms. What were originally simple organisms gradually differentiated, on the basis of the principle of the division of labor, and grew into entities with more complex structures. This idea of evolution, linked with the process of increasing differentiation and complexity, was taken up by the two major representatives of the evolutionary approach in sociology in the 20th century — Parsons and Niklas Luhmann.1 Talcott Parsons (1902 1979) studied economics at Amherst College in America. In the 1920s, he visited London and Heidelberg as a postgraduate student, where he encountered the European sociological tradition. Parsons then spent his entire professional life at Harvard University. His first major work was the extensive 1937 study The Structure of Social Action, which tried to reconcile two essentially opposing sociological approaches — the individualist sociology of Max Weber and Durkheim’s holistic sociology. After World War II, Parsons began to study the issue of social systems. His most important work, published after World War II, was The Social System (Parsons, 1967 [1951]). Parsons developed a new theoretical paradigm, known as structural functionalism (or simply “functionalism”). The three main concepts of structural functionalism involve the concept of the social system, its structure, and function. The social system is not a fixed, unchanging order, but must be seen as a dynamic entity. When examining a social system, emphasis should be put on the identification of its structures and functions. It is assumed that each system, by definition, has a 1. A third important evolutionary approach is sometimes considered to be the conception of Jürgen Habermas (1981).

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definite and specific structure, and this structure arises from the individual parts (or subsystems) of the social system and their interrelationships. Each component within this structure contributes in its own way to the reproduction of the overall complex. These contributions, in turn, are called functions. As a result, the individual structural elements of the system, in performing their given functions, cause each part of the structure to contribute in a specific way to the maintaining of the system as a whole. Parsons’ structural functionalism can be illustrated through the acronym AGIL, developed within the purview of his systems theory. If society is to be regarded as a system, then the conclusion is that every social system, in order to “survive” and reproduce itself, must have four basic functions, AGIL: (A) adaptation, (G) goal attainment, (I) integration, and (L) latency (maintenance of latent cultural patterns), respectively (Parsons, 1966, pp. 28 29). As a social system, society in general can be described as a structure created by four subsystems: (1) the economy, (2) polity (or political system), (3) societal community determined by the legal system, and (4) the fiduciary (or educational) system composed of the church, family, and school. The structure of the social system thus consists of the mentioned four subsystems and the interrelationships between them. Each of these subsystems performs one of the specific functions of AGIL (Parsons, 1966, pp. 28 29) and in this way contributes to maintaining the social system as a whole. The economy performs the function of “A” — adaptation to the environment in which the social system is located. The political system is in charge of setting function “G,” that is, collective goals and their attainment. The societal community and legal system is responsible for “I” — the integration of society. And finally, the fiduciary system is in charge of maintaining “L” — latent cultural patterns. Parsons’ original theory implied a long period with a static and a-historical (nonhistorical) character. It was this neglect of history and dynamism that sparked most critiques of it. Under fire, Parsons complemented his structural functionalism with an evolutionary perspective. The result was Parsons’ book Societies: Syst ems , Str uc tur es, and Funct ions

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Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives, which genuinely assumes the character of historical sociology. Here, Parsons presented his conception of long-term evolutionary development, presented as occurring as outlined by Spencer: that is to say, through functional differentiation (Parsons, 1966, p. 21 ff.). Parsons identified three evolutionary types of societies: (1) the oldest — primitive societies, (2) transitive societies, and (3) modern, contemporary society. Parsons speaks about four basic evolutionary cultural universals which are indispensable for the reproduction of all societies and their evolutionary development, which therefore occur in various forms in all types of places. These are language, religion, kinship, and technology. Parsons’ theory was very popular in the 1950s and early 1960s, when he was considered the most important sociologist in the world. Some theorists even believed that Parsons’ structural functionalism could lead to the unification of the previously heterogeneous, multiparadigmatic sociological discipline into a unified, monoparadigmatic science. During the 1960s, however, Parsons’ theory came under fire and by the 1970s it had lost popularity and respect. One reason for this shift was Parsons’ overemphasis on value-consensus and conformity, and his understanding of social conflicts as something pathological, as a societal disease to be disposed of once and for all. It was in opposition to Parsons that conflict theory — which features later in this chapter — was formed.2 In the 1980s, the American sociologist Jeffrey C. Alexander reawakened a certain wave of interest in Parsons’ theory (1983). Today, Alexander — inspired by Parsons — is engaged in developing a cultural sociology (Alexander & Smith, 2002), which deals inter alia with the memory of the Holocaust, and cultural trauma (Alexander, Eyerman, Giesen, Smelser, & Sztompka, 2004). 2. In the framework of Parsons’ school, interest in conflict has emerged in the historical sociological works of Neil Smelser and Shmuel N. Eisenstadt. Smelser (1959) dealt with the riots caused by the promotion of industrialization in England in the 17th and 18th centuries, and Eisenstadt (1963) with conflicts in the study of historical bureaucratic empires.

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Inequality, Stratification, Mobility In sociology, especially when focused on empirical research, we encounter the term social structure: sometimes in a broader, other times in a narrower sense. In the broader sense, it is assumed that social realities can be analyzed through structural cross-sections. On one level, this may involve the demographic structure of the population, on another the social-class structure, and on a third level the structure of political, economic, cultural, and other institutions. In a narrower sense, the notion of social structure has often been equated with social-class structure, for which the term social stratification became common. The term stratification is derived from the Latin word stratum (layer) and in the social sciences is used in the context of social stratification. This is in turn associated with the unequal status of the members of various parts of the population. Different historical types of social stratification include caste-, estate-, or classbased societies. Caste stratification, motivated by religious beliefs and connected with the strict separation of all aspects of life of the members of each caste, is typical of Indian society. The estate system, stressing the importance of the family, kin, and consequent social position was found particularly in premodern European society. In the modern societies of the 19th century, social stratification took the form of class differentiation, which, in comparison with the differentiation of caste or estates, was much more open to various movements and changes in the status of individuals. One of the basic questions concerning the functioning of systems of stratification is whether and to what extent the social differences in society are considered legitimate. Great inequalities considered legitimate need not to be a source of conflicts, while smaller differences, when regarded as illegitimate, can nevertheless provoke conflicts. In the 18th and 19th centuries, attention turned to the issue of classes — even before Marx — through French and English economists (Quesnay, Turgot, Smith, and Ricardo) and French historians (Thierry, Guizot, and Mignet). The essence of class difference Syst ems , Str uc tur es, and Funct ions

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according to Marx lay in the unequal positions of men in the social system of production. The basic class distinction of capitalist society is represented by two classes: the capitalists — “bourgeoisie,” that is, owners of the means of production and the workers — “proletariat” — who are excluded from the means of production and consequently must sell their labor to capitalists. Even today, we encounter a significant stream of research into social stratification in sociology, inspired by the work of Marx. One of its prominent representatives is Erik Olin Wright (1989). Another stream of contemporary stratification research, for example that of John Goldthorpe (1996), is inspired by Max Weber. Weber declared that inequality in contemporary society has three dimensions. One is economic, leading to classes. According to Weber, class differences arise not in the field of production, but due to market mechanisms. The second dimension is social, in that people differ according to the degree of respect, honor, and prestige attributed to them in society. Thus, there is the distinction of status (in German die Stände). The third dimension is power-politics, which divides human individuals into political parties and power groupings (Gerth & Mills, 1958, pp. 180 194). While in the Marxist approach social inequality is viewed as a one-dimensional (economic) phenomenon, in the Weberian concept it is seen as multidimensional. An important contributor to understanding social stratification in this second sense was Pitirim A. Sorokin in the 1920s (Sorokin, 1927, pp. 11 12), who declared that social stratification is not one-dimensional but multidimensional, labeling the key dimension “economic, social and powerpolitical.” Thus, from the three dimensions of social inequalities of Weber, he constituted one social problem: social stratification. Contemporary sociological concepts of social stratification usually emphasize that the stratification of society is based not on one but on several criteria. At the same time, despite the existence of stratification inequalities, the status of citizens in modern society is in essential respects equal and carries equal rights. This is an equality understood and guaranteed politically, legally, and through citizenship (equality before the law, voting rights, etc.).

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Contemporary stratification research often works with models of classes that are similar to those of American sociologist William Lloyd Warner (1898 1970). He distinguished six classes: (1) upper-upper, (2) lower-upper, (3) upper-middle, (4) lower-middle, (5) upper-lower, (6). lower-lower (Warner, 1966, pp. 42 43). Concerning the status of individuals in this class hierarchy, the decisive criteria (Warner, 1959, p. 69 ff.) are known as status indicators. Such indicators include for instance economic status (occupation, income, wealth), education, power-political position, social contacts, lifestyle, way of life, attributed esteem, and prestige. On the basis of these particular indicators, the overall classification of the individual is calculated, termed synthetic or multidimensional status. The affiliation of the individual to a particular social class can, alongside the mentioned status indicators, be demonstrated by behaviors and ownership of status symbols, for instance verbal styles, types of leisure activities or sports, home address, brands of passenger car, wristwatches, shoes, clothing, and so on. In contemporary sociology, considerable attention is paid to the social-class structure of society described by the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930 2001), who attached major importance to what he called “capitals,” which in common parlance indicates financial and material resources that serve the production and circulation of goods. Bourdieu extends this understanding by using the term capital outside the area of commodity monetary relations. He distinguishes four basic types of capital — economic, cultural, social, and symbolic (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 99 ff., 1998) — which are unequally distributed. According to Bourdieu, economic capital means various forms of material wealth (not just the means of production) and money. Economic capital is capital in the traditional sense of the word. Although Bourdieu does not doubt the importance of this type of capital in contemporary societies, he believes that it acquires real meaning only when coupled with two other kinds of capital: cultural and social. Cultural capital is primarily educational capital, which Bourdieu considers more important in developed societies than social capital. Syst ems , Str uc tur es, and Funct ions

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Cultural capital has its own logic, which is clearly distinguishable from the logic of material wealth. Bourdieu differentiates between various forms of cultural capital: (a) the objectified state, (b) the embodied state, and (c) the institutionalized state. a) Cultural capital in its objectified state is available in the form of books, paintings, art works, technical equipment, etc. In this form, it is closely tied to economic capital. All the abovementioned objects also have material value (which means economic price), and most of them can be exchanged for money. Objectified forms of cultural capital, however, depend also on the cultural competences of social actors. A book without readers is like a work of art without a viewer with the appropriate aesthetic dispositions, and both would be mere objects with the value just of the material from which they were made. b) Cultural capital in its embodied (incorporated) state is understood as personally mastered and internalized cultural competence, including all the cultural abilities, skills, and forms of knowledge that can be acquired through education (in the widest sense of the word). This form of capital is fundamentally linked to the body and mind. One must personally acquire the adequate education, which requires time (the value of cultural capital is expressible in the time required for its adoption). Because this cannot be delegated, it must be invested by each player individually. c) The third form of cultural capital is institutionalization, especially in the form of documents (certificates and diplomas) regarding the completion of a certain level of education and educational degrees. A degree as a certificate of cultural competence gives its owner a permanent and legally guaranteed conventional value, which places at their disposal not only an incorporated capital but also a warrant authorizing them to exercise a profession, which is thereby convertible into financial income (i.e., economic capital).

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Social capital is understood as human relations which the actor is engaged in and which can be resorted to if for some reason the support of individual actors or groups is needed. Social capital is therefore based on the possibility of using an enduring network of social relations based either on mutual acquaintance or recognition and respect. Symbolic capital acts as capital of honor and prestige, as a credit of esteem in the broadest sense, using symbolic emphasis, status symbols, and signs of distinction. In most cases, we encounter symbolic capital in the society of other forms of capital, and it helps to strengthen their specific effectiveness. We can also understand it as legitimation and recognition of the presence of the three capitals. Through the lens of Bourdieu’s theory, one can imagine society as a whole as a space of social positions (Bourdieu, 1984, pp. 128 129), in which those individuals who are close to each other (occupying the same or similar positions), who have comparable compositions of capital, represent social classes, further divisible into narrow, specific parts of the population. People with similar compositions of capital, according to Bourdieu, are characterized by another collective feature: their habitus (ibid., p. 169 ff.). Bourdieu understands habitus as a set of dispositions to see the world in a certain way, think about it in a certain way, and act accordingly. Bourdieu’s theory of habitus may be understood as a newer and more sophisticated version of Marx’s theory of class consciousness. Some sociologists give special attention to the social strata at the top, known as the “elite.” In the history of sociology, there are two concepts of elites: (a) the elite of political and managerial power (identified by Gaetano Mosca 1858 1941) and (b) a selective power elite of those members of society who achieve the highest and best performance (Albertoni, 1987, pp. 109 113). The founder of the selective power concept, Vilfredo Pareto (1848 1942), believed that elites exist in all areas of social life. People vary in their capabilities and performance of activities and can be evaluated over a certain range of points. Those who score maximum points in a given area are the most competent and form Syst ems , Str uc tur es, and Funct ions

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the elite. Contemporary sociological research (Machonin, 2002) distinguishes political, economic, and cultural elites. The concept of social stratification is also connected with social mobility, promoted by Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin. In his 1927 book Social Mobility, Sorokin differentiates vertical and horizontal mobility (Sorokin, 1927, p. 133 ff.). Vertical mobility can be defined as the transition of an individual or social group from one social class to another; there are two types of mobility: upward and downward (social advancement or descent). Horizontal mobility meanwhile means the movement of individuals or groups (e.g., migration) where their social level (status) remains in principle unchanged. Vertical and horizontal mobility can be observed in the life of one generation as intragenerational mobility, or in the life of several generations (grandfathers, fathers, sons, …) — from this intergenerational perspective, there are nowadays surveys on the reproduction of social inequalities. A characteristic type of upward vertical mobility is a so-called career. Indian caste society, meanwhile, was completely closed in terms of vertical mobility. In premodern European states, mobility of profession was firmly limited (two significant “channels of mobility,” enabling limited social advancement, were service in the church and in the army). One of the characteristics of contemporary modern society is that the two types of mobility — vertical and horizontal — are more substantially present than in earlier types of societies.

Theories of Conflict As has already become clear thus far in our overview, the major divisions running through sociological thought have resulted from different ways of explaining social reality. These different approaches to sociological explanation take the form of antinomies, dualisms, and paradoxes. One such is the opposition of consensus and conflict, where a disagreement exists over how order and orderliness occurs in society, and how it is maintained. The theory of consensus says that social order is the result of forces of

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social agreement, while the theory of conflict views the same order as the outcome of conflict, violent power, and coercion. The theory of consensus appeared with the emergence of sociology as an independent discipline. Auguste Comte, as we may recall, made the claim that society maintains cohesion and retains its order through cooperation based on the division of labor and a shared religious faith. After Comte, we find a similar approach in Durkheim as well, who explained the problem of consensus through the concept of solidarity. The main representative of this consensus theory in the 20th century, as previously mentioned, was American sociologist Talcott Parsons, for whom the optimal condition for society is equilibrium and integration. Key to this is a consensus of values — the generally shared values and norms supported by the cultural, educational and legal systems, and mechanisms of social control. Parsons was criticized for overemphasizing consensus and the need for individuals’ conformity to society and treating conflict uniformly as something pathological to be removed from society once and for all, and this criticism gave shape to what became known as conflict theory. The roots of this actually went back to the 19th century, where for example Social Darwinism claimed that the basic tendency affecting the life of societies is the struggle for survival among both individuals and groups. One representative of Social-Darwinist sociology was the Austrian sociologist Ludwig Gumplowicz (1838 1909) (Gumplowicz, 1926 [1884]). Another approach that stressed conflict was the theory’s most famous and intellectually influential representative of the 19th century, Karl Marx, with his concept of class struggle and proletarian revolution. At the same time, there were theoretical approaches which combined the elements of consensus and conflict in a single explanatory model. One example is from Herbert Spencer, who saw violent power and coercion as the main force of social order in the archaic type of militaristic society; for industrial society, contrastingly, the basis of order was cooperation based on the division of labor. Another is from Norbert Elias, who not only highlighted conflicting elements in his theory of civilization but also gave attention to consensual forces. Syst ems , Str uc tur es, and Funct ions

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It is important to note that there were somewhat different reasons for the emergence of the modern theory of social conflict in the United States and Europe, respectively, after World War II. In the United States, it came as a reaction to the dominance of Parsons’ functionalist theory, which unilaterally emphasized consensus and the explanation of society through stable, inert order. Opposition to Parsons’ approach emphasized that conflict is nothing abnormal in society, but a common phenomenon which contributes to the creation of social order, and that therefore its study is necessary: this was the position of Lewis Coser. In Europe after World War II, the situation was somewhat different: conflict theory there was formulated in opposition to its treatment in Marxism, a position spearheaded by Ralf Dahrendorf.

Social Functions of Conflicts Lewis Alfred Coser was born as Ludwig Cohen into the family of a Berlin stockbroker. In 1933, he emigrated from Hitler’s Germany to Paris, where he studied at the Sorbonne. In 1941, he was forced to emigrate to the United States, where he gained a doctorate from Columbia University. After gaining a professorship, Coser taught at Brandeis University (Waltham, MA, 1951 1968) and at the State University of New York (Stony Brook, NY, 1969 1987). He died in 2003. Coser was the author or editor of two dozen books, the bestknown of which are: The Functions of Social Conflict (Coser, 1965 [1956]); Continuities in the Study of Social Conflict (Coser, 1967); Masters of Sociological Thought ((Coser, 1977), a survey of the history of sociology). Coser’s theory of social conflict is outlined primarily in The Functions of Social Conflict. In this work, Coser followed the analysis of conflict from Sociology (1908) by German sociologist Georg Simmel, from whom he adopted a number of important ideas. Coser defines social conflict as a struggle for values, higher status, power, and resources, in which the aim is to neutralize, capture, or destroy the opponent. It would be wrong to describe Coser as

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uniformly celebrating conflict: his aim was to show that conflicts in society can play a positive role, but may also have negative consequences. Coser analyzes the role of conflicts between societies, the role of conflicts within societies, and what impact external conflicts between societies have on the conflicts within them. Society, for Coser, is the result of processes which have both a cooperative and a conflictual character, in which the actual conflicts fulfill both positive and negative functions. Positive effects of conflict include cohesion and solidarity within the threatened group. Furthermore, threatened or vulnerable groups look for allies who can help them, and as a result, new social relations are formed. Moreover, conflicts can serve as a kind of communication; although this may be connected with personal sacrifice, it can lead to the spread of information and culture. Coser distinguishes between true or realistic conflicts and false or nonrealistic conflicts (Coser, 1965, pp. 48 55). The driving force of realistic conflict is usually frustration stemming from the nonfulfillment or suppression of certain requirements or needs. Realistic conflicts have a certain goal: to remove the source of frustration and unfulfilled expectations. Here, conflict serves entirely as a means to achieve this goal. In addition, it arises only in the relationship between its participants and must somehow be solved between them. An example of a realistic conflict is a duel between two rivals. A characteristic of realistic conflict is an appropriate correspondence between the conflict as a means, on the one hand, and the aim or goal to be achieved on the other hand. A nonrealistic — false — conflict arises when there is no correspondence between the means and the goals in conflict. Essentially, this unrealistic type of conflict has two kinds of possible solution. One is the release of emotions through such means as humor or satire or “letting off steam.” In a society where tension grows, it is necessary to release or ventilate it so that it is transferred to other areas, such as in participation in a mass spectacle like a football or hockey match. Societal systems, according to Coser, can provide “safety-valve institutions” whose task is to release or ventilate the excessive pressure from hostile and Syst ems , Str uc tur es, and Funct ions

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aggressive emotions (ibid., p. 39 ff.). These institutions help to maintain the societal system by preventing social explosions with destructive effects. A clever society creates “ventilation institutions” and institutional channels which regulate conflict in this way, preventing irresolvable conflict from leading to the destruction of its core values. The second type of solution for unrealistic conflicts is much more dangerous and destructive: what is known as the “scapegoating” (ibid., p. 44), where aggression is turned not onto the real culprit, but to a substitute, a compensatory subject identified as the culprit, despite being innocent. Usually, this “scapegoat” is a minority ethnic or religious group. Some societies, in order to maintain their integrity, create the image of an external enemy or alien group within their midst (ibid., pp. 104 110). A specific group of people is labeled as an enemy, as a hostile force, as a group with hostile intentions. Such a slander of a group, suggesting that it has some “dangerous thoughts,” may have the effect of a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the provoked group may react as a real enemy and become a real danger. In any case, once this fabricated enemy has been defeated — often at no small cost — it becomes necessary to find a new enemy for the process to continue. In the purview of conflict theory, the image of an internal enemy, that is, a hostile group intrinsic to society, can also play an important role. One striking instance of the employment of this image occurs in totalitarian regimes. When the regime encounters problems, it can say that these problems were caused by the “enemy within,” and this internal enemy may be punished as a “scapegoat.” Coser points out that not all hostility necessarily results in open conflict. In the case of class conflict, it depends primarily on whether or not class differences are credibly legitimized. For example, in a caste society where differences are religiously motivated, the danger of an outbreak of conflict is relatively low. Coser — following Simmel — also develops considerations on the difference between conflicts motivated by personal, subjective goals and those with impersonal, objective principles. The course and consequences of conflicts in which the participants represent

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supraindividual ideals and values tend to be more ruthless and severe. Depersonalization, coupled with the feeling that one is fighting for greater religious purposes or eternal truths, paradoxically dehumanizes the conflict (ibid., p. 111 ff.). People commit acts that they could never justify from their private interests, and thus the conflict is driven to positions from which it is very difficult to recover. For Coser, marginal or peripheral conflicts which concern less significant matters may actually strengthen society, while other conflicts, which threaten its basic consensus and solidarity, can be fatal and lead to its disintegration. Even a large number of peripheral conflicts may be less dangerous than a single major conflict. In particular, conflicts endanger rigid societies, where there is a much greater risk of disintegration and destabilization. A stable and free society can usually accept conflict, because it does not fear that its consequences will be disintegration. By contrast, unstable and vulnerable societies live in fear of conflicts and therefore try to prevent them. As a result, however, internal pressures grow and the risk of an uncontrolled explosion and collapse increases.

Social Conflict in Modern Society Ralf Dahrendorf (1929 2009) studied in Hamburg and London. As a professor, he worked from 1958 in Germany (in Hamburg, Tübingen, and Konstanz), while in 1974 he became director of the London School of Economics, and in 1987, warden of Saint Anthony’s College in Oxford. Having assumed British citizenship, he was knighted in 1993 and elevated to the peerage. Dahrendorf focused on the sociology of politics and political philosophy. A prolific writer, his oeuvre contains several particularly important texts: Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society ((Dahrendorf, 1963a), originally published in 1957 in German as Klassen und Klassenkonflikt), Homo sociologicus ((Dahrendorf, 1964), a book about the theory of social roles), Life Chances (Dahrendorf, 1979), and The Modern Social Conflict (Dahrendorf, 1988). Syst ems , Str uc tur es, and Funct ions

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Dahrendorf considers a wide variety of social conflicts, creating a typology of conflicts based on two criteria. The first is the level at which the conflict takes place. He identifies the following conflict levels: (a) the social roles level, (b) the social group level, (c) the social sector level, (d) the society level, and (e) the international level. The second criterion is the nature of the relationship between opponents in a conflict: (1) the opponents in the conflict are equivalent, (2) the relationship is between superior and subordinate, and (3) the conflict is between the whole and a part. On the basis of these criteria, Dahrendorf creates a typology with 15 types in total (Dahrendorf, 1963b, p. 206). Dahrendorf’s main approach is not to deal with all 15 types of conflicts but mainly with one type of conflict, class conflict, which in his typology is registered as a conflict of type “d2.” In other words, a conflict at the level of the whole of society (d) concerning the relationship between a class in a superior position and one in a subordinate one (2). Dahrendorf’s theory of conflict is a direct response to Marx (Dahrendorf, 1963a, pp. 117 154). We should recall that Marx sees social classes as economic ones, determined by the positions of people in the system of production. Marx believed that in the course of history, classes appeared at a certain level of social development, and that in the future they would disappear again. Finally, Marx believed that the path to the abolition of classes was proletarian revolution. Dahrendorf, in opposition to this schema, understands social classes as differing primarily in their positions of power. The first class is in a ruling position while the second is controlled, in a subordinate position. Unlike Marx, Dahrendorf believes that classes have existed forever and will continue to do so. From this perspective, Dahrendorf rejects Marx’s idea of proletarian revolution as a way to eliminate class society and class conflicts. Dahrendorf devotes considerable attention in his theory to the problem of intensity and violence (idid., pp. 210 213). He notes that in this respect conflicts can take different forms: They can take the form of mutual criticism, or discussion and negotiation — as well as disobedience or strikes. They can even take the form of

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demonstration and social unrest. Finally, there can be violent struggle and civil war. The essence of Dahrendorf’s theory is to demonstrate that conflicts of this type are eternal. Consequently, it is nonsense to wish to remove or destroy them once and for all. Such efforts — according to Dahrendorf — are vain and foolish. All that can be done is the regulation of conflicts, which is Dahrendorf’s key sociological idea. Dahrendorf sees regulation of conflicts as involving the adoption of societal rules that both opponents are willing to respect and follow. This may moderate their intensity and especially prevent escalation into bloody fighting and killing. According to Dahrendorf, there is no question of eliminating class conflicts, but only of regulating them, transforming them into a moderate and civilized form. At the end of the 1970s, Dahrendorf dealt with the issue of modern social conflicts in connection with the concept of life chances. Dahrendorf says that modern social conflicts concern the question of what life chances are at the disposal of different groups of the population. Dahrendorf understands life chances as a result of two interrelated components: options (possibilities and alternatives) and ligatures (Dahrendorf, 1979, pp. 32 36). Options are the alternatives open to people, the structurally predetermined framework of possibilities in which individual decisions are situated. Ligatures, on the other side, are deep cultural ties, that is, social and cultural anchoring. Serving to support individuals, Dahrendorf’s ligatures are the orientations, wishes, and preferences that guide people in the world of options. In the book The Modern Social Conflict (1988), Dahrendorf focuses on the question of options. Here, options are differentiated according to two concepts: entitlements, that is, allowances and empowerment, and provisions, that is, security and care (Dahrendorf, 1988, pp. 17 18). Entitlements, for Dahrendorf, are connected with the issues of rights and political freedoms, and provisions with the area of economic and social security. To improve human welfare, according to Dahrendorf, it is necessary to develop both areas of options: not only provisions — that is, economic and social security — but also entitlements — that is, human rights and freedoms. Syst ems , Str uc tur es, and Funct ions

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Appendix to Conflict Theory Even though today the literature devoted to the issue of conflicts is rather extensive, it is still true that sociology favors the formation of theoretical models that record society at a standstill. One of the authors to consider the problem of conflicts in the later 20th century was Raymond Aron, who analyzed the course of the Cold War (Aron, 1948, 1951); he was concerned with class struggle (Aron, 1964) as well as wars and relations between nations (Aron, 1962, 1983 [1976]). The issue of conflicts is crucial for the study of international relations, especially for realism (Schelling, 1960; Waltz, 1959). We also meet the phenomenon of conflicts in political philosophy (Arendt, 1965, 1970), political science, in the economics-oriented theory of dependency, and in postcolonial studies (Young, 2001). There is also research on ethnic conflict (Harff & Gurr, 2004; Schlee, 2006) and terrorism (Juergensmeyer, 2000; Pape, 2006; Pape & Feldman, 2010). Also focussed on the theme of wars and armed conflicts is the sociology of war (Malesevic, 2010), and today, particularly in historical sociology there is an emphasis on revolutions (Eisenstadt, 1978, 2006a; Moore, 1966; Skocpol, 1979), the formation of the state (Collins, 1999; Ertman, 1997), international relations (Hobden & Hobson, 2002), and power struggles (Mann, 1986, 1993, 2012, 2013, 2005; Tilly, 1990, 2003). In recent years, widespread interest was awakened by the book The Clash of Civilizations and Remaking of World Order by Samuel Huntington (1996), which claims that we live in a world where the fundamental source of conflict is no longer ideological or economic, but cultural and religious. Huntington distinguishes eight main actors (civilizations) influencing international relations: Chinese (Confucian), Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox, Western, Latin American, and African. He claims that while some of these civilizations are more subject to conflicts than others, nowadays for many reasons the greatest conflict potential arises from Islamic civilization. Huntington does not understand this conflict as something inevitable, however, and at the level of international relations he discourages interventions and

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interference in the affairs of other civilizations, because he considers such actions very risky and dangerous in the modern world.

Structuralism and Poststructuralism If we recall the enormous intellectual influence that both structuralism and poststructuralism held over all the human sciences in the final decades of the 20th century, it becomes difficult to explain simply and clearly. One strategy could be to discuss the general features of the structuralist approach and pose a few basic questions: What are the roots of structuralism? Who were its forerunners and founders? Here, four important persons should be mentioned, two of whom we have already encountered. Emile Durkheim influenced structuralist thinking with his requirement that social phenomena should be understood as things and further by his emphasis on supraindividual social reality and supraindividual social facts. There is also Durkheim’s orientation of sociology toward the issue of collective consciousness, especially with regard to religion. Second, Karl Marx must be mentioned once again, in this case for providing a model for the structuralist emphasis on the detection of hidden structures which, in the form of systematic rules, influence social processes, in this context attempting to reveal the hidden structures of the capitalist economy. We should recall the assertion in the 1960s by French structuralist Louis Althusser that Marx’s work Das Kapital formed a new stage in the development of the social sciences because it was the first structuralist work, which therefore needed to be read and interpreted using the structuralist method (Althusser, Balibar, & Brewster, 1970). In addition, we should mention Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, as the first to explore the hidden structures of the human psyche, ascribing importance to the unconscious mind; the unconscious became one of the key concepts of structuralism. Most immediately significant for the emergence of structuralism, however, was Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 1913), a Swiss Syst ems , Str uc tur es, and Funct ions

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linguist, whose discipline of linguistics served as the main stimulus for the development of structuralism in the social sciences. De Saussure laid the foundations of structuralist linguistics in his writing Course in General Linguistics (Saussure, 1977), published after his death. His essential contribution to linguistics, often termed a “Copernican revolution” within the discipline, consisted in his shift away from what he terms the diachronic approach to the study of language, prevalent in his era. The diachronic approach is actually a historically grounded method that concerns itself with the changing usage of individual words across the passage of time. In opposition, Saussure puts forward the revolutionary idea that language must be grasped as a whole, as a system, as it operates here and now. For a more vital study of language, he argues, it is necessary to apply a synchronous approach. In Saussure’s analysis, the system of language is organized through definite linguistic rules hidden behind the actual words. Structuralist linguistics is about how to capture and grasp these hidden linguistic structures, this hidden system of rules. A similar claim can be made with respect to structuralism in the social sciences. Here too, the main goal of structuralist research is the detection and revelation of hidden structures, this time of the social order. One of the key concepts of Saussure’s theory is the concept of the sign. The sign is an arbitrary entity, meaningless in itself but used to represent some part of the reality in which we live — or that exists in the human mind. It is only within a system, usually a human language, that these signs allow us to communicate real or imaginary objects to other users of the same sign-system. Saussure proposed the creation of a new science — a science of signs, under the term “semiology,” though it was later replaced by a term proposed by American philosopher Charles Saunders Peirce (1839 1914), “semiotics.” Although an independent discipline, semiotics developed specifically within the framework of structuralist approaches. Clarification of several basic concepts is necessary for a better understanding of the specific perspective of structuralism:

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Structure. Representing a central intellectual basis, this is often defined as a network of relationships between elements. For our purposes, though, it is especially important to remember that the “structure” in structuralism is seen in terms of a set of patterns or rules. Crucially, these rules are hidden from immediate sight, and the structuralist attempts to identify these rules and visualize them. In the opinion of French structuralist Claude Lévi-Strauss, the reality around us is colorful, diverse, and constantly changing, yet behind this superficial diversity and variability it is possible to find a hidden system of invariable, unchanging patterns (Lévi-Strauss, 1995, p. 8 ff.) according to which reality is governed. The Unconscious. For Sigmund Freud, the unconscious was an important part of the human mind. Here, well away from normal awareness, the memories of unpleasant experiences are stored, things that people try to displace from their minds because they are unpleasant and traumatic. Yet in the unconscious, these traumatic memories remain and can become a source of psychological problems, such as neuroses. In response, Freud developed his psychoanalysis as a method to uncover these displaced experiences as the sources of mental disorders and thereby contribute to the healing of patients. In the context of structuralism, the concept of the unconscious is slightly different from its Freudian interpretation, referring instead to the existence of hidden structures within the human mind that we are unaware of but which nevertheless significantly shape our behavior. Structuralism specifically attempts to uncover and reveal these unconscious — or unsuspected — structures. One example is linguistic structures, that is, grammatical rules. A small child learns to speak with correct grammar even before the start of formal education and instruction in the language’s rules. As a result, we can conclude that conscious knowledge of grammatical rules is not necessary for the correct use of a language: grammar is thus one example of unconscious and unsuspected structures. Syst ems , Str uc tur es, and Funct ions

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The relationship of structuralism to history. Classic structuralism is a-historical or nonhistorical. Structuralism assumes that it is possible, behind social development, to find definitive hidden structures, hidden rules which are stable and unchangeable. Yet if structuralism is characterized by a tendency to a-historicism or nonhistoricism, it does not mean that structuralist thought is incompatible with, or totally hostile to, any conception of history. Starting in the 1960s, the French historians associated with the journal Annales (often termed the “Annales school”), most notably Fernand Braudel, tried to apply structuralist thought in historical science and sociology. Braudel (1972a) is known for distinguishing three types of time in history: (1) the time in which individual historical episodes are situated (like battles, coups, revolutions, etc.), or time of “short duration”; (2) the time in which social cycles and processes of a rhythmic and alternating character take place — the time of social rhythms or cyclic time; (3) time of long duration — captured by the French formulation “longue durée”; in other words, time in which history is constantly influenced by an invariable, unchangeable fixed structure. In his most widely cited work, Braudel dealt with the history of the Mediterranean (1972b), viewing its geographic and climatic conditions as an unchanging structure which for so long had determined the history of the region. The human individual. Structuralism is programmatically opposed to subjectivism. From the structuralist perspective, the human individual is in the background. Structuralists emphasize the supraindividual factors which influence our lives, stressing above all the existence of hidden social structures. Human individuals are seen as entities forced to submit to these structural rules and to conform to these structural pressures. Hence, the human individual is secondary to the wider structures in which it exists.

Invariable Structures One thinker deserves special credit for the development of structuralism in the social sciences: Claude Lévi-Strauss. Although the

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area of his professional interest was specifically cultural anthropology, his contribution was important for historical sociology as well. Claude Lévi-Strauss was born in 1908 in Belgium, in a wealthy Jewish family, and studied law and philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1935, he began working at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, conducting field research in 1939 among the South American Indians of Mato Grosso and along the Amazon River. During World War II, he served as a volunteer in the French army, emigrating to the United States after France’s surrender. He lived in New York, where he taught at the New School for Social Research. After the war he returned to France, where he held positions as professor in Paris at the École pratique des hautes études and the Collège de France. Claude Lévi-Strauss died in 2009 at the age of 101. From Lévi-Strauss’s rich bibliography, we will discuss four works: A World on the Wane ((Lévi-Strauss, 1961), also published under its original French title Tristes Tropiques (1955)), which describes Lévi-Strauss’s research on Brazilian Indians before World War II; Structural Anthropology I II (Lévi-Strauss, 1967, 1976), a formulation of the foundations of the structuralist approach to cultural anthropology and the social sciences; The Savage Mind (Lévi-Strauss, 1966), probably the most famous of Lévi-Strauss’s books, analyzing the thought system of Australian aborigines, and Mythologiques I IV (1964 1971), an extensive late work devoted to the structural analysis of myths. As already remarked, Lévi-Strauss defines the structuralist approach as the search for and discovery of invariants, or elements not subject to change, among a wide range of superficial differences, or as a search for some kind of hidden, unchanging rules concealed by surface changes and the diversity of social reality. To rephrase: structuralism is the search for the hidden order obscured by external chaos (Lévi-Strauss, 1995, pp. 5 14). Another characteristic of Lévi-Strauss’s thinking is cultural relativism, in other words a rejection of the idea that individual nations or cultures can be ranked according to their cultural maturity. Evolutionary or hierarchical conceptions that assume that Syst ems , Str uc tur es, and Funct ions

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some cultures are advanced and others are backward are, in LéviStrauss’s view, grounded in prejudice. For him, every human culture is somehow remarkable and interesting, with each culture having achieved its own interesting results. Lévi-Strauss addressed these questions in the framework of cultural anthropology. His research was directed toward the following areas: kinship systems, indigenous systems of knowledge and thinking, research of myths and mythology, and the theoretical and methodological problems of cultural anthropology. In our interpretation, we focus only on the topics relevant in terms of historical sociology. Lévi-Strauss’s fundamental distinction is between so-called “hot” and “cold” societies (Lévi-Strauss, 1966, pp. 233 234). Contemporary, modern societies are hot societies, while the archaic, tribal societies studied by cultural anthropology are cold societies. The difference between hot and cold societies lies in their approach to historical time. Modern, hot societies emphasize the course of historical time and the changes which occur in it. The idea of history and change is an integral part of the consciousness of modern society. By contrast, cold societies try to ignore historical time and change, and to blot them out. This attempt is based on rituals in which the members of a tribe attempt to connect directly with their mythical ancestors and communicate with them and thus nullify and reverse the passage of time, which separates them from their mythical ancestors. The thinking of cold societies is characterized by Lévi-Strauss in a phrase usually translated as “the savage mind,” or more literally “wild thinking” (la pensée sauvage), in contrast to the “domesticated mind,” which represents the thinking of modern societies (ibid., p. 263). The achievements gained through the modern, domesticated mind are based on a strategy in which every problem is divided into many partial issues, which are examined separately. With this strategy, modern societies have developed the sciences and a scientific way of thinking. By contrast, the savage mind is characterized by a tendency to holistic understanding, a mental structure with a tendency to include every partial problem in some broader framework, in the framework of the whole.

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Moreover, the savage mind also has the tendency to understand things using shortcuts and simplification — Yet as Lévi-Strauss also notes, the savage mind is quite sophisticated and not as simple and primitive as people in modern society assume. Of key importance in Lévi-Strauss’s structural anthropological conception of society is the term “exchange” (Rosman & Rubel, 2009). Society, according to Lévi-Strauss, consists of individuals and groups among whom exchanges take place — and such exchanges are what constitute society and culture. In archaic, tribal societies, Levi-Strauss sees three types of exchange: the exchange of women, creating a system of kinship; the exchange of goods and services, which is economic exchange; and the exchange of communications and information, used for the dissemination of news and knowledge. Each of these can be seen as a specific type of communication, yet equally, as a specific type of game. Each of these three types of exchange, communication, or game takes place in human society according to definite rules. The aim of structuralism is to detect and visualize these rules. In structuralist anthropology, there are therefore three types of rule or three types of structure: for kinship, the economic exchange of goods and information exchange. In the final phase of his life, Lévi-Strauss turned his attention to the area of human knowledge and its hidden structures. For tribal, traditionalist, “cold” societies, this area specifically implied myths; hence he tried to reveal the hidden structures contained in particular myths, common across many such cultures.

Variable Structures Poststructuralism emerged in France in the wake of classical structuralism, shifting and adapting structuralism with an increased focus on the topic of language, semiotics, literary texts, and knowledge. Poststructuralism most clearly differs from classical structuralism in its rejection of invariable, unchanging structures, proposing instead that they change over historical time. Poststructuralism was popularized through the term “postSyst ems , Str uc tur es, and Funct ions

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modernism,” which dominated Western thought especially in the 1980s and 1990s. The main representatives of poststructuralism are Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, and Roland Barthes. Foucault, because of his specific and very notable importance to historical sociology, is our focus here, with his themes of “knowledge” and “power” and the relationship between them. Power is for Foucault the main principle of the development and integration of society. Born Paul-Michel Foucault in Poitiers in 1926 into the family of a surgeon, Foucault studied from 1946 to 1952 at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. He studied philosophy and graduated in psychology. In the 1950s, he was employed as a teacher and cultural worker in Uppsala, Sweden, in Warsaw, Poland, and Hamburg, West Germany, and became a university professor in the 1960s — first in Clermont-Ferrand, then in Tunisia, and from 1969 at the College de France in Paris. He died in 1984, among the first prominent victims of the AIDS epidemic. From Foucault’s bibliography, his early book Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason (Foucault, 1967) stands out examining changing opinions on madness and how to deal with the insane, from the Renaissance to modern times. A subsequent work, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (Foucault, 1970), deserves attention because it examines the historical changes in scientific thought. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Foucault, 1979) focuses on the issue of the transformation of the penal and prison systems. The History of Sexuality, I III (1976 1984) is a work not only about sexuality but also the relationship between power and sexuality, and what its author terms “bio-power.” The Order of Things (Foucault, 1970) is a contribution to the “archeology of knowledge” — a phrase that should immediately mark Foucault out as a different type of structuralist from Claude Lévi-Strauss. His goal was not the revelation of permanent, invariable structures, but quite the opposite: the historical variation of structures across time. The central concept of Foucault’s archeology of knowledge is the concept of the “episteme” — to be

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understood as the cognitive schema which forms the basis of scientific and philosophical knowledge in a particular historical epoch. In this book, Foucault describes the period from the Renaissance to the 19th century, finding in its course two essential breaks that separated three different epistemes, three different ways of scientific thinking. The first period was dominated by the episteme of the Renaissance, which was based on similitude: unknown things are explained by analogy with familiar things. In the second period, the period of Enlightenment (the French use the term the “classical age”), another episteme began: the classical episteme, based on mathematics and the ordering of knowledge in the form of synoptic tables, where the findings are arranged on the basis of measured differences. In the third — the modern — period, the modern episteme started, with its own particular tendency to organize findings on the basis of their historical development. Foucault, in describing the period from the Renaissance to the 19th century, thus distinguishes three different structures of scientific knowledge — three different epistemes or, we could say, three different discourses, separated by two radical breaks, by two ruptures. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Foucault, 1979) focuses on the transformations in the way that crime was punished during the 18th and 19th centuries. At the beginning of the 18th century, it was still common for criminals to be executed publicly, as well as to undergo brutal public tortures. In the 19th century, a new system of punishment appeared, establishing that criminals would no longer be tortured, but instead punished in prisons, where they were forced to work, and forcibly adapted, indeed “broken in,” by a variety of disciplinary techniques. Foucault pays attention to a specific social phenomenon: the development of the penal system and the modern prison. Nevertheless, the book is important in a much broader context, as a contribution to the debate on the processes which gave birth to modern society. Foucault scrutinized the shift from the 18th to the 19th centuries, as traditional society was ending and modern society starting. Syst ems , Str uc tur es, and Funct ions

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Foucault shows the importance to modern society of disciplining human subjects (ibid., p. 135 ff.), and that the imposition of modern discipline is coupled with — perhaps even unimaginable without — a system of control, surveillance, and penalties. Simply put, the goal of the disciplining process is training the clumsy body of the former peasant for the demands of a machine-led factory. Foucault focuses mainly on the prison system but simultaneously shows that a number of institutions are similar in their emphasis on discipline, surveillance, order, control, and penalties. Foucault finds it no coincidence that in modern society prisons are similar to military barracks, schools, hospitals, and factories, because all these institutions apply the same rules and the same principles (ibid., p. 293 ff.). Modern society, then, requires surveillance and control. Foucault points out that the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham in his time proposed a new type of architecture, which he called the “panopticon” (ibid., p. 200 ff.). Bentham’s panopticon was an architectural arrangement with a central observation point from which it is possible to maintain surveillance over all spaces of a building. The Panopticon is a space in which the observation of everything happening within it is enabled while the observer remains unseen to the observed. Not only were prisons and penal camps built in this way, but indeed other institutions in modern society. The effort to monitor and control everything, Foucault observes, is typical of modern society, which he directly terms a “panoptical society.”

Functional Differentiation and Its Consequences Niklas Luhmann (1927 1998) studied law in Freiburg, Germany. At the end of the 1960s, he was at Harvard University in the United States, where he encountered Parsons’ sociology. Influenced by Parsons’ theory, Luhmann developed his theory of social systems in Germany from the 1970s onward. He worked all his life at the University of Bielefeld.

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Luhmann’s theory of social systems became especially popular in the 1980s and 1990s. Gradually, Luhmann moved away from Parsons’ structural functionalism and created his own, original, systems theory (Luhmann, 2012), which differs from Parsons’ structural functionalism primarily in his rejection of the conception of AGIL in the framework of functional approaches. Luhmann proposes three levels on which social systems are constituted (Luhmann, 1984, p. 16). On the lowest level, there are interaction systems — that is, personal interactions. When two individuals simply come together and start to communicate with each other, they are creating an interaction system. On the middle level, there are organizational systems, economic, military, scientific, religious, or other entities. The highest level is represented by societal systems — that is, societies. Modern society is differentiated into societal subsystems, such as politics, economics, law, and so on. Luhmann argues that social systems are not created from human individuals, but from the communications that take place among them. For Luhmann, human individuals can themselves be described as psychological or personal systems. He argues that human individuals are not constituent parts or components of social systems, but instead form the surroundings for impersonal systems. This opinion is rather grandly termed methodological antihumanism. It does not mean that Luhmann dislikes people, but that systemic sociology has to deal with social systems, rather than with human individuals. What are the main concepts of Luhmann’s systemic sociology? These may be summarized by the terms autopoiesis, complexity, evolution, and contingency. The term autopoiesis, which Luhmann borrowed from biology, is of Greek origin, and means “self-production.” Essentially, the social system — in analogy with a living organism — creates itself from its composite parts. Social systems are, according to Luhmann, autopoietic systems. The concept of complexity means the degree of intricacy. Luhman argues that each system can exist only when it reduces the complexity of the world around it. The basic life strategy of all systems is to reduce this complexity (i.e., the centrality of the Syst ems , Str uc tur es, and Funct ions

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reduction of external and internal complexity). According to Luhmann, existence always offers more options than the system can actually use, so has to reduce their number — that is, reduce complexity. Yet the way that the system chooses from its options, how it makes selections and reduces complexity is, for Luhmann, associated with randomness and chance, an aspect which he terms “contingency.” Finally, evolution is associated with three mechanisms: “variation,” “selection,” and “stabilization” (Luhmann, 1991, p. 151). Variation means the abundance of options on offer, far too many for the system to use entirely. It must choose and reject from among them through a selection process. In turn, stabilization means that what has been chosen remains stable for some indeterminate period of time. Selection and stabilization, however, are themselves affected by contingency — by randomness. Luhmann emphasizes that evolutionary development takes place without any predetermined direction and purpose. The future is open, and we cannot know it. At each step, the whole previous development of mankind was affected by certain contingencies, by certain events of a random nature. If our contemporary society has a certain form, this is merely the outcome of random processes from the past. Luhmann speaks about three evolutionary types of society: segmental, stratified (i.e., a class-divided society), and functionally differentiated (Luhmann, 1997, p. 634 ff.). This conception can be regarded as Luhmann’s historical sociology. Segmental societies are archaic simple forms of human coexistence such as tribes, clans, villages, city-states, and so on, of limited size and not yet differentiated into specialized subsystems. Stratified societies are more advanced types of societies, in which the process of functional differentiation has begun in such a way that, for the first time, an autonomous political subsystem is separated from the general mass of society. The emergence of a political system leads to social inequalities among the different groups of the population — that is, to the emergence of classes and stratification. A functionally differentiated society is a contemporary type of society; Luhmann finds the term “functionally differentiated” more

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accurate than the generalized “modern society” used by other authors. In a functionally differentiated society, its framework has been subdivided into a large number of specialized societal subsystems — politics, economy, military, religion, law, science, art, among others. In connection with this, Luhmann highlights one of the problems with which contemporary society has to deal: the risk of disintegration. Luhman says that each societal subsystem is something like an autonomous societal unit. Each societal subsystem — like politics, the economy, the military, religion, law, science, art, and the rest — exists in the contemporary world as an autonomous circuit of communication, which is not connected with other subsystems in a direct and meaningful way. Moreover, according to Luhmann, in today’s society there is no subsystem which can effectively integrate the others, let alone coordinate and manage them (ibid., p. 802). Politicians think that such an exclusive subsystem is the political subsystem, but, in Luhmann’s view, this is only an illusion. Contemporary society, he states, operates without a top and center. It must be said that Luhmann’s conclusion is very controversial and remains widely discussed even after his death.

World-System Immanuel Wallerstein (1930), mentioned in the context of spacetime, created a monumental work on the development of what he termed The Modern World System. Wallerstein’s research builds on dependency theory, dating back to the late forties and the ideas of economists such as Hans Singer and Raúl Prebisch; in subsequent decades, this theory has been embellished by Paul A. Baran, Andre Gunder Frank, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and others. Dependency theory was formulated in direct relation to Marxism: in analogy to capitalists and proletarians, developed countries are called the core (or the north) and are understood as exploiters. Correspondingly “backward” countries are called the periphery (or the south) and understood as exploited. Syst ems , Str uc tur es, and Funct ions

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Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein studied at Columbia University. As a professor, he worked at universities in Canada (Mc Gill University) and the United States, most notably as the head of the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilization at Binghamton University (until 2005). In his main work The Modern World-System: Volumes 1 4 (Wallerstein, 1974, 1980, 1989, 2011), the author characterizes the world-system as a territorial system interconnected by economic ties. This system, marked by inequality and exploitation, links, on the basis of economic exchange, the rich, developed countries of the so-called core, with the poor, undeveloped periphery and semiperiphery countries. Wallerstein analyzes how this system has developed in cyclic phases from the 15th century to the present, in periods of expansion alternated with periods of contraction. Wallerstein is significant and exceptional in the context of sociological thought in that he diverted the attention of sociology from its narrow focus on societies within the borders of nation states, to global issues. In this sense, he anticipated contemporary globalization theory, roughly two decades before it became fashionable and widespread. The starting point of Wallerstein’s approach is a critique of Parsonian modernization theory, coupled with a critical, revising acceptance of Marx’s economic theory and use of the inspiration brought by Fernand Braudel. For Wallerstein, alongside the spatial perspective the aspect of time is vital. He considers that the present is determined to a much greater extent by the past than sociology, which is attached to the present, is willing to admit. The modern world to Wallerstein is mainly a capitalist one. In his view, it was born neither thanks to the Protestant ethic, as Weber asserted, nor by the process of primary accumulation of capital, as Marx declared. The world was formed through processes of long-distance commerce and exchange of goods between particular regions. For Wallerstein, the basic unit of analysis is not individual countries or regions but a system on a much broader scale formed by global networks of markets and economic relations, which endow the whole with a distinctly new quality. It is a

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system as a spatio-temporal whole, going much further than units defined on a power-political basis, and as such has a structure in which there are specific functions. Its boundaries are fungible and formed by the international distribution of labor and the spatiotemporal movement of goods and money. From Wallerstein’s perspective, therefore, capitalism from the very beginning was not a matter of national states, but a phenomenon on a world-wide scale, in processes of long-term dynamics, dating back to the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries. Let us add that critics fault Wallerstein’s model not only for economic reductionism that ignores particular developments in the political-power area but also for exaggerated holism, according to which the world is more integrated than it is in reality. The structure of the world-system in Wallerstein’s conception is formed as a result of extremely unequal ratios between three areas. In the center there is a core, which is the main mover of the system. The core produces products of the highest quality, from which comes the majority of capital, and also the major centers of exchange. The core makes use of more wealth and consumes a much greater rate of production than the rest of the world. On the edge of the system there is a periphery area, which supplies raw materials and cheap labor. Between these two territories, we find the semiperiphery, an area with characteristics of both the core and periphery. The area not (yet) integrated into this global system is called the external area. The capitalist world-system creates extremely unequal conditions. Societies in worse positions are mostly dependent on those which are better off. If the core plays the role of exploiter and the periphery the role of the exploited, the semiperiphery is in the position of the middle class. Exchange between regions takes place in the context of the asymmetric distribution of labor, in which peripheries are assigned to the quarrying of raw materials and monoculture farming, combined with forced labor, including slavery. The development of this system is influenced primarily by principles of capital accumulation, which in the past few centuries have become a major, though not the only, driving force of social evolution. In this Syst ems , Str uc tur es, and Funct ions

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development, several basic trends have long been seen, most notably that the world-system is expanding (by the 19th century it had already reached planetary dimensions), its ties deepening, and the structures associated with its three zones experiencing internal shifts (the position of individual countries indeed has a considerable persistence, but is not stable, in the long-term they can rise or fall within the system). The perspective that Wallerstein and his followers bring to the development of the world-system is that of Braudel’s long duration (Wallerstein, 2004). In addition, this includes a second Braudelian dimension: the rhythmic cycles of rise and fall in Kondratieff waves economically and power relations politically. The beginnings of human history, according to Wallerstein, were accompanied by archaic minisystems: small self-sufficient units of gatherers, hunters, or cultivators. These archaic communities were in later times incorporated into more comprehensive formations which can be described as historic world empires, based on the agrarian economy and centralized political-power. According to Wallerstein, what has not yet been satisfactorily explained is the process by which these agrarian empires shifted to the capitalist system. This is where Wallerstein’s conception of the world-system comes in. Its development proceeded according to the author in several phases. The first formative phase took place between the late-15th and early-17th centuries and was characterized by breaking away from the remnants of feudalism (Wallerstein, 1974, pp. 67 129). Thanks to long-distance trade there was gradual economic integration, leading to a wholly new entity. The modern world-system was established as a Europe-centric world economy and certainly initially it did not stand on strong foundations. At that time there were several centers of development of long-distance trade, and Europe was not yet developed enough to dominate (China at the time equaled Europe and was perhaps even ahead of it). The formation of this system led to the structuring of relations between center, periphery, and semiperiphery. In the first decades of the existence of the world-system its dominant forces were

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Spain and Portugal, but these soon lost out in favor of the economically better-prepared Netherlands. The core of this system was then formed between the Netherlands, England, and northern France. The periphery was represented by Eastern Europe (Poland) and South America. In semiperipheral position, there were Spain, Portugal, Italy, southern Germany, and southern France (Wallerstein, 1974, pp. 225 297, 301 344, Wallerstein, 1980, pp. 36 71). The second phase of development took place from the mid-17th century to the mid-18th century and was associated with the consolidation of this system and the suppression of alternative systems. At this stage, the world-system expanded slowly but internally restructured itself. The power of the Netherlands declined, and a struggle for hegemonic control took place between England and France (Wallerstein, 1980, pp. 75 125, 244 289). In the second half of the 18th century, England emerged as the winner. South and North America were by this time peripheries of the world-system, while Asia and Africa meanwhile remained largely outside its scope. In the third phase, which lasted from the mid-18th century until 1914, the inclusion of the rest of the world into the world-system took place — including Asia and Africa — as peripheries (Wallerstein, 1989, pp. 127 189). Another important change was the industrialization of the core (ibid., pp. 3 53). The United Kingdom maintained its hegemonic position until the 1880s, when it was overtaken in production volume by the United States, which had progressed from peripheral position to gain hegemony in the world-system. The fourth phase, which began with the First World War, has continued to the present day. Nowadays, the core of the worldsystem consists of the leading capitalist countries of Western Europe, North America, Australia, and Japan. The semiperiphery includes East Central Europe and Russia, some countries of Latin America and East Asia. The periphery is made up of the rest of the world. The end of the 20th century, according to Wallerstein, was associated with the inevitable decline of the power of the United States (Wallerstein, 2003), which raises the Syst ems , Str uc tur es, and Funct ions

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question of who will be the new hegemon in the context of the world-system. Unlike Marx, Wallerstein does not believe that the capitalist system develops naturally according to some form of future social organization. The future is seen as open, and thus his work on the history of the modern world-system remains open too.3

3. The fourth volume of Wallerstein’s work The Modern World-System ends in the year 1914 (Wallerstein, 2011). The last fourth phase of development has not yet been systematically worked up by Wallerstein.

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Civilizational Analysis

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Part

V

The word “civilization” comes from the Latin word civis identifying the inhabitants of the city, which means townsman or citizen; it evolved from the adjective forms of civilis. Being civilis, that is, civilized, meant therefore to lead a lifestyle characteristic of the city, that is, characterized by a certain level in the fields of culture, technology, politics, and economics. The word civilization entered the English dictionary from French in the 16th century. Its spread is associated with the development of the Enlightenment in the 18th century. According to the theory of Norbert Elias, patterns of civilized behavior in Europe at that time arose especially from the environment of aristocratic courts. Today’s use of the term civilization — though frequent in literature — is associated with a number of problems concerning its definition. As Johann Pall Arnason shows, the concept of civilization is used both in singular and in plural, and between these approaches arises an unmistakable discrepancy (Arnason, 2009; Arnason & S^ ubrt, 2010). The singular is used mainly in considering the universal historical process of development, where what is known as civilization arises, forms, evolves, and changes. The plural is used most often in the comparison of different civilizations (in terms of socio-cultural formations). From a historical point of view, it is possible, as Arnason shows, to observe these two approaches in action since the 18th century; however, in the

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context of Enlightenment the singular dominated over the plural. During the 19th and 20th centuries, the understanding of both concepts was transformed. The concept of civilization in the singular can be found in approximately four different conceptions. In the first, often now considered politically incorrect, it represents simply a “civilized way of life,” with certain rules of human coexistence, living standards, and peaceableness in social life. In the second, civilization is synonymous with social progress in the sense of the historical development of human capabilities (e.g., in the writings of Marx). The third concept is associated with the effort to draw a sort of dividing line between primitive and civilized stages of history, which appears in anthropology, archaeology, or prehistory (e.g., Lewis Henry Morgan’s identification of the third developmental epoch of mankind with the expression civilization, which replaced savagery and barbarism). The fourth case is the most important from the point of view of contemporary historical sociology, because it is represented by the civilizing theory of Norbert Elias. Discussions in recent decades have shown that the problem of civilization in the singular is that it can be judgemental, especially if used to make a distinction between the civilized and uncivilized, which immediately raises reservations among cultural relativists (Arnason, 2009). Regarding the concept of civilizations in the plural, even here the situation is not very clear. Authors who have shaped ideas about civilizations in the plural, including Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee, were oriented toward the study of civilization cycles. The very popularly-received work by Spengler, The Decline of the West (1991 [1918 1923]), contributed significantly to the establishment of this approach, which appeared in a more elaborate form in Toynbee’s multivolume Study of History. However, during the 20th century interest in the problems of civilization was sidelined for a long period and overridden by new themes, in particular after World War II when modernization theory dichotomized historical development into two kinds of social system: traditional and modern. Research on civilizations in the plural revived in the late 20th century. The current course of discussion suggests that civilizations

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are seen largely as great socio-cultural entities, as macro-social and macro-historical formations; however, a clear definition in terms of spatio-temporal boundaries has not so far been agreed. The basis for distinguishing various civilizations is usually seen in the area of culture and associated with the dominance of certain religious traditions. Contemporary civilization analysis therefore tends to emphasize the central role of culture, while trying to avoid what is known as cultural determinism, thus taking into account the dimensions of political power and economics. The whole problem is nevertheless complicated by the fact that the concept of civilization is in many ways related to that of culture.1 There are many different interpretations according to which the two concepts can be understood as synonyms, but also as substantively different. One extensively explored concept (especially 1. From the etymological viewpoint, the expression culture goes back to ancient times (from the Latin colere — nurture, educate); its spread occurred during the Renaissance and Enlightenment. The beginnings of theoretical reflection on culture are connected with philosophy (S. v. Pufendorf, I. Kant, J. G. Herder, J. G. Fichte, G. W. F. Hegel, W. Dilthey, W. Windelband, etc.) and the development of modern science and then found in the context of history, that is, cultural history (J. Burckhardt, K. G. Lamprecht, J. Huizinga, P. Burke), social and cultural anthropology (E. B. Tylor, A. L. Kroeber, B. Malinowski, R. Benedict, Margaret Mead, L. A. White, C. Kluckhohn, C. Geertz, M. Sahlins), and many other disciplines (today, even in economics, political science, or evolutionary psychology). In the course of the 1960s, the American anthropologists Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn tried to categorize various approaches to defining cultures and came up with 10 basic concepts, including: (1) descriptive definitions (a summary of certain elements); (2) historical (highlighting the role of tradition), (3) normative (culture is conceived as a set of rules); (4) value (the importance of values of human behavior); (5) psychological (culture is the result of adaptive solutions to the problems which people face); (6) learnt (emphasizing the need to acquire culture through learning); (7) structural (culture is seen as a structured and at the same time integrated whole); (8) genetic (culture is conceived as a collective human product passed from generation to generation); (9) ideological (regarding culture as ideological content communicated in symbolic, especially linguistic expressions); (10) symbolic (accentuating the meaning and use of symbols, Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952). An important role is also played by the concept of culture in sociological thinking (A. Weber, F. Znaniecki, P. A. Sorokin, T. Parsons, and others). Contemporary sociology is even regarded as a discipline that has undergone in recent decades a “cultural turn.” The primary driving force of this turn is usually regarded as being the rise of cultural studies, associated with The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies whose leading figure was Stuart Hall. Its successor is associated with the so-called strong programme of cultural sociology, formulated by Jeffrey C. Alexander (Alexander & Smith, 2002).

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in German thought) supposes that culture consists of myths, religion, and art, while civilization is generated by technique, technology, and science.2 In another case, culture is understood as taking priority over civilization, while a further version posits that civilizations should be defined as large-scale formations including many societies and cultures (Arnason, 2009). The concept of “civilizational analysis” was applied by Said Amir Arjomand and Edward Tiryakian (2004), as a collective identification of interdisciplinary, theoretical, and historical approaches to civilizations. Civilizational analysis deals not only with differences and parallels but also with intercivilizational contact and conflict, interaction, interconnection, and change-overs. The most famous name associated with this is Samuel Huntington, whose civilizational research is particularly important because of its postulation of a world conflict. Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations (1996) is one of the most widely read, but also most criticized, works in professional circles. Other personalities deserving of attention include Jaroslav Krejc^í, who focused on identifying long-term development trends. Krejc^í promoted the name civilizationistics for this. In his understanding of civilizations, the inspiration of British historian Arnold J. Toynbee is evident. Another notable figure in civilizational analysis is Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, whose works most clearly demonstrate contemporary civilization turnover. For Eisenstadt, the 1980s was crucial, a decade in which he oriented himself on the problems of the axial age and axial civilizations, offering not only new views on problems of civilization development but also on the theory of multiple modernities. His research programme opened arguably one of the most promising lines along which today’s civilizational analysis is proceeding.

2. Let’s recall that for instance Alfred Weber in his work Cultural History as Cultural Sociology (Weber, 1951 [1935]) distinguishes social processes (regarding social organization), civilizing processes (ongoing in the area of material production, science and technology), and cultural processes (including the phenomena of spiritual culture).

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The Civilizing Process One of the most important figures in historical sociology, as has already been evident from the frequency with which his name has been mentioned in this text, Norbert Elias created a remarkable and original theory of the civilizing process, based on extensive comparative study of historical sources. Part of the originality of Elias’s theory lies in the impossibility of its assignment to any previously extant sociological school. In addition to the theory of the civilizing process, Elias is also known as the creator of a second concept, the concept of figuration, leading to the characterization of his work as “figurational” sociology or “figurational” theory. Although Elias published his most significant writing as early as 1939, he did not win recognition and respect in the broader global context until the late 1970s. Today, Elias’s work has attracted a wide range of followers developing their own research on the basis of his model and inspiration. Norbert Elias was born in 1897 into a Jewish family in Breslau,3 where he initially studied philosophy. After graduation, he spent the years 1925 1930 in Heidelberg as an assistant to Alfred Weber.4 From 1930 to 1933, Elias was employed at the University of Frankfurt as assistant to Karl Mannheim.5 In 1933, he completed his major post-graduate work, with the title The Courtier and was to have been appointed to the position of “Dozent” (a prerequisite to becoming a professor). However, the standard academic procedure was not completed, because 1933 was the year that Hitler came to power in Germany, and Elias, along with many other Jewish scholars, was forced to emigrate. In 1933 he went to Paris, 3. Breslau was at that time a part of Germany. Since 1945, it has been the Polish city of Wroclaw. 4. Alfred Weber was the younger brother of Max Weber, whose primary work (1935) dealt with the sociology of culture. He developed his research in connection with the work of his brother Max and can also be regarded himself as a figure active in the area of historical sociology (Weber, 1951 [1935]). 5. Karl Mannheim is also an important figure in the history of sociology. Regarded as the founder of the sociology of knowledge, Mannheim is the author (1929) of Ideology and Utopia (1991 [1929]).

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and in 1935 to London, where he received a small scholarship allowing him to do his own research, following up his previous study on the Courtier and courtly society. During the subsequent three years, he created his most widely read work, the aforementioned Civilizing Process. Issued in two volumes, The Civilizing Process was published by a Swiss publishing house in 1939, but went almost unnoticed in that eventful year; Elias had fallen into oblivion. He lived through World War II in England and remained there afterward, working in the field of adult education. Isolated from the mainstream of world sociology, his writings remained generally unknown within the profession. Not until the late 1970s was Elias’s work discovered, yet despite this decades-long gap he emerged as a famous and respected sociologist in his old age. During the 1980s, several new books by Elias were published in rapid succession. At the end of his life, Amsterdam became his home, as he had many students and followers in the Netherlands. Elias died in Amsterdam in 1990, his reputation secured by numerous publications: The Civilizing Process (Elias, 1994 [1939]) (in German Über den Prozeß der Zivilisation); The Court Society (Elias, 1983; a revised version of Elias’s unpublished Habilitationsschrift, The Courtier, from 1933); The Established and Outsiders (Elias & Scotson, 1965); The Quest for Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the Civilising Process (Elias & Dunning, 1986); Involvement and Detachment: Contributions to the Sociology of Knowledge (Elias, 1987); Time (Elias, 1992b); The Society of Individuals (Elias, 2001); What is Sociology? (Elias, 2012 [1978]). It is difficult to speak about influences on the sociology of Norbert Elias. Elias himself did not speak about them nor did he make many references to his inspirations. However, undoubtedly Elias’s scientific orientation was greatly affected by the sociology of Max Weber and his brother Alfred. Elias’s understanding of sociology and his concept of “figuration” also have close similarities to the ideas of German sociologist Georg Simmel. However, Elias was also familiar with French sociology, and his views on a number of problems were surprisingly close to Emile Durkheim’s. Moreover, Elias’s study of the civilizing process was clearly influenced by the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud. Most particularly,

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the crucial psychological entity termed the “superego” by Freud was seen by Elias as the result of a long-term historical process of psychogenesis. The book The Court Society (Elias, 1983) is a reworked version of Elias’s unpublished Habilitationsschrift (Dozent-work), The Courtier from 1933. In this book, Elias studies the central role of royal courts in 17th- and 18th-century Europe. In particular, he examines the formation of the absolutist court in France — specifically the court of Louis XIV and its immediate predecessors, those of Henri IV and Louis XIII. Elias describes and explains the development which court society underwent as the elite formation of an absolutist state. His interest is focused on the structure and order of court society, expressed in the specific etiquette and rationality of court life (ibid., pp. 110 114). Based on literary sources such as the memoires of duc de Saint-Simon and many other courtiers, Elias examines the rituals and etiquette applied at the court of Versailles. Life in court society, Elias demonstrates, required considerable self-control and discipline. The nobles resident at the court, as much as any of the service staff, were under great pressure from courtly etiquette. Moreover, even the monarch himself was subject to this pressure. An important part of courtly etiquette was respect for the freedoms and limitations of specific positions. It was forbidden to overshadow somebody in a higher position and unthinkable to be overshadowed by somebody in a lower position. This consideration included houses, the number of servants at each house, clothing, furniture, food, carriages, hospitality, entertainment, and much else. Aristocrats had to determine their expenses according to their obligations rather than their incomes, often resulting in debt. For a modern observer, influenced by contemporary capitalism, most aristocratic expenses would seem incomprehensible and eccentric. Looking at a French aristocrat of the 18th century, one may wonder why he did not reduce his spending when he fell into debt. But to consider this aristocratic behavior as irrational and to apply modern capitalist logic to it is — according to Elias — not only anachronistic but also greatly misleading. Elias Civilizational A nalysis

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demonstrates that the extensive spending of the members of court society represents a specific form of rationality different from capitalist economic rationality (ibid., p. 93). Against capitalist rationality, which is based on the pressure of economic mechanisms, the rationality of the French court was created under pressure from the mechanisms of absolutist aristocratic society. Elias concludes that the rationality of the court was different from capitalist rationality, but not in itself irrational. Elias’s most significant work, The Civilizing Process (Elias, 1994 [1939]), had the subtitle Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations in the German original. In the first volume of this work, Elias deals with the process of psychogenesis, the long-term development of the structure of human personality, manners, and ways of behavior. In the second volume, the author deals with the process of “sociogenesis,” defined as the long-term evolution of states and of social structures of inequality, power, and order. Both types of processes — psychogenesis and sociogenesis — form the civilizing process as a whole. They run parallel and interdependently, and neither process can be characterized as basic (primary) or derived (secondary). For his examination of the issues relating to psychogenesis, Elias drew upon historical materials — mainly guides to good manners and proper behavior produced by such Renaissance authors as Erasmus of Rotterdam, John Russel, or Giovanni della Casa. Elias noted changes in the requirements for proper behavior formulated in these writings in different historical periods, which therefore led him to study the development of these changes. In doing so, Elias uncovered and described the process of psychogenesis, in other words the long-term development of structures of human personality and behavior. Elias’s approach to psychogenesis may be compared to that of a psychoanalyst. The study of historical sources served the same purpose for Elias as psychoanalysis in patient interviews. On the basis of his evaluation of literary texts, etiquette guides, memoirs, or diaries, Elias uncovered the unconscious processes of the developing regulation of human instincts, affections, and feelings.

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What changes of behavior did Elias note? One example is dining etiquette (Elias, 1994 [1939], pp. 68 105). In the early Middle Ages, behavior at the table was far less refined and determined by spontaneous affections and instincts. People ate with their fingers, which were unwashed, and even after eating remained so. They ate wildly, devouring their food. Gnawed bones were thrown straight to the ground. Diners blew their noses in their hands, or on their clothes, or on the tablecloth. This kind of behavior changed little during the medieval times. Only the end of the Middle Ages brought a certain refinement. Elias paid particular attention to the issue of unregulated, instinctive aggression, typified by the patterns of action of medieval knights. These spent their lives, as Elias states, plundering, destroying, killing, maiming, and torturing innocent people. From the perspective of medieval society, this behavior was not outrageous or aberrative, but simply conformed to the accepted standards of the social stratum of warriors (ibid., pp. 156 178). During the Renaissance, behavior became much more delicate, when compared to its medieval counterpart. These behavioral shifts all proceeded in the direction of increasing control over physicality. Increasingly, the performance of a great number of physical acts was subjected to various rules and, more particularly, hidden from the view of others. Increasingly, human emotions and instincts found themselves under suppression. Expressiveness and spontaneity faded from human behavior. What was previously allowed and accepted found itself accompanied by feelings of shame, embarrassment, or even disgust. Elias’s civilizing process can be understood not only as the advancing refinement of behavior but also as a system of control modeling the personality, here given the term psychogenesis. This process is characterized by the constant restriction of the instincts and emotive acts of human behavior. Through the development of specific standards of shame and embarrassment, an invisible wall, an invisible barrier, arose around instinct and emotion. Initially, this historic shift in the control of instincts and emotions took place through peer pressure (in German Fremdzwang). Later, external force was converted into internalized pressure Civilizational A nalysis

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toward self-restraint (in German Selbstzwang), operating automatically and independently of the situation and sanctions. A new mental structure was thus created, called — following Freudian terminology — the superego (ibid., pp. 492 498). Yet this superego was not a necessary component of human psychology, but for Elias simply a structure acquired through the socialization process. In the second volume of The Civilizing Process, Elias turned to the deeper past, to the very beginning of the Middle Ages, during which the Western Roman Empire ceased to exist. The main topic in this part of Elias’s work is the process of the creation of the state. Early medieval Europe was characterized by the lack of such uniform, closed, and stable social units as states and nations. Instead, Europe was divided into many small, more or less sovereign, areas. Great empires could emerge through military conquest, yet in the end they would, due to their instability, disintegrate rapidly. In this context, Elias invokes the ideas of centrifugal tendencies and the process of feudalization: during this period, there were insufficient forces to hold larger state units together. This situation gradually changed from the 16th century on as a result of social development and wars, as strong monarchs emerged in Europe to establish the two key monopolies that mark the state: the means of violence (armed forces) and fiscal control (taxation) (ibid., pp. 380 389). Both monopolies are interdependent according to Elias. Neither the control of force or of finances is possible independently; they exist in mutual dependence. The monarch has the means of violence, that is, the army and the police, because they have the money to pay armed men, which brings fiscal monopoly. Equally, the monarch can successfully collect taxes because they have access to the means of violent power — the army and police. As a result of these two monopolies, rulers managed to overcome the centrifugal tendencies in feudalism, to stabilize power and to consolidate the social order. This historical process was accompanied by changes to the overall social order and processes of social life. As the monarch had an army and a police force at their command, they could successfully

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and effectively keep peace and order in their entire country. In contrast to the ever-present threat of violence of feudal times, the social situation became one of much greater calm, leading society at large to behave in more peaceful ways. In parallel with this development, the daily lives of the nobility were transformed. In early medieval times, knights lived as warriors ruling small territories and were constantly fighting. The process of sociogenesis — that is — the process of the creation of the modern state — made polite courtiers out of these wild men-at-arms: they were integrated through the need for physical presence in the royal court, and there they led peaceful and refined lives as courtiers. The civilizing process can be characterized as the process by which wild knights and warriors became polite members of the royal household, in other words a courtly aristocracy (ibid., pp. 455 475). Polite behavior, in this context, emerged as a distinctive symbol of nobility distinguishing courtiers from other groups of the population. However, this polite behavior spread, gradually and over time, through other segments of the population, and in this way the civilization of manners gradually penetrated the whole of society. The process of psychogenesis, which Elias described and explained in the first volume of his work The Civilizing Process, and the process of sociogenesis, which he analyzed in the second volume of his work, are interdependent. In other words, each requires the other to be in place. Psychogenesis is dependent on sociogenesis because the human individual can regulate, refine, and cultivate their behavior only in a society which allows them to do so, in a society of peace and security, with a stable social order in place of continual hostilities. And the reverse is true: a pacified and secure society with a stable social order can only be created by individuals who are able to control their behavior, who are not wild and aggressive in their actions, and who are able to adhere to social norms. The role of sport in the civilizing process is a question which Elias examined in collaboration with his student Eric Dunning (Elias & Dunning, 1983, 1986). As previously mentioned, the medieval warrior lived by fighting and loved the process of combat Civilizational A nalysis

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(here, Elias uses the German term Angriffslust). The life of the medieval warrior had no other function. He spent his youth exclusively preparing for battle; in times of peace, amusement was found in tournaments, which differed from actual fighting only very slightly. In the early Middle Ages, argued Elias, aggression and violence were functionally necessary, yet the situation changed with the beginning of modern civilized society. The desires and emotions of combat and offense — as natural parts of human psychology — still had their legitimate place in civilized society, yet this place was precisely bounded, allowing them to function only in refined and rationalized forms. The socially acceptable expression of combat and attack is found in sports matches, and in watching sports matches, for example, boxing matches. Sport — according to Elias — is the area of civilized society in which emotions and instincts can be discharged in a civilized way (Elias & Dunning, 1986, pp. 126 204). In addition to his writings on the civilizing process, Elias produced another theoretical innovation in the form of the concept of figuration (Elias, 1992a, 2012 [1978]). Elias was clearly aware that all theoretical thinking in sociology is built on two opposing perspectives: the perspective of individuals as members of society, associated with Max Weber, and the holistic perspective of a society greater than the sum of its parts, associated with Emile Durkheim. Elias tries to overcome this seemingly irreconcilable dichotomy by utilizing a concept (i.e., figuration) which highlights the linking of those social relations that connect human individuals to each other within the broader social whole. Figurations, according to Elias, are very often associated with frameworks where different groups of people fight for power and domination, which implies that the important aspect of Elias’s concept of figuration is power. Another key concept in Elias’s thinking is the term “process.” Elias is attracted by long-term developmental processes which are of a spontaneous nature — processes unintended and unplanned, which nevertheless manifest themselves over the long term. Elias, however, notes that the persistence of these processes in a certain direction or trend does not ensure their continuance in the same

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direction. The future, for Elias, is open, and social development has no prescribed direction. Moreover, the events of the 20th century show that social processes may stop, slow down, or completely change direction. Even if we may clearly observe that certain processes in society have developed in a specific way for a very long time, this past tendency provides no guarantee that these things will continue thus in the future (Elias & Dunning, 1983, p. 33). Elias warns that the civilizing trend which he identified in his work may change, and in its place could come a decivilizing process connected with re-barbarization.

Paradigms of Human Condition Nowadays, the professional audience has warmed to the work of Jaroslav Krejc^í and probably above all to his contribution to the theory of history. Krejc^í was trying to reveal the basic structures and developmental paths of historical processes. Those conceptions of history that assume its linear and unidirectional progress he designated as simplifying and he did not agree with the idea of some binding succession of periods or formations. Inspired by the critical study of a variety of authors he formulated his own approach, characterized by refusing any monistic conception based on the absolutization of an individual factor. Jaroslav Krejc^í was born in 1916 in the village of Poles^ovice (near the town of Uherské Hradis^te^) in Moravia, into the family of a Czech lawyer and politician. Though he graduated from Charles University faculty of law, his first professional involvement was with macroeconomics. After World War II, he worked as an economist in various economic institutions and lectured at the Commercial College in Prague. In 1954, he was accused of high treason by the Communist regime and sentenced to 10 years in prison, and only released in May 1960 under an amnesty. After the Soviet invasion of 1968, he went into exile in the United Kingdom, where he held a professorship from 1976 at the University of Lancaster. After the fall of Communism in 1989, Krejc^í remained in Lancaster as an emeritus professor, but Civilizational A nalysis

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regularly returned to Prague. He published his works in English and Czech. An important topic for Krejc^í was social revolutions, which he dealt with systematically for the first time in the 1960s and later repeatedly returned to (Krejc^í, 1968a, 1968b, 1983). He did not limit his interest to the basic problem of power reversal, but was interested in broad questions, including the initial formation of conditions for reversal, the maturing of causes, the sequencing of various periods, as well as reversals and digressions from them and their ramifications, both near and far. Krejc^í distinguished two types of revolution. The first he labeled “vertical,” that is, inside one country (examples include the Hussite, English, and French revolutions). The second was “horizontal,” characterized by the political and territorial separation of the revolutionary party from the original group (examples include the Dutch Revolution, the American Revolution, and the Revolutions in Spanish America). Among the key concepts, Krejc^í utilizes the term “configuration.” Krejc^í distinguishes two basic types of configuration. The first is civilizational, sometimes referred to as socio-cultural configurations. These are defined in particular by their “idea base,” which means their way of thinking, attitude to the meaning of life, value hierarchy, and distribution in time and space, which creates a basic axis of human history. The second type of configuration is societal, that is, “societal” systems, which Krejc^í conceives as multidimensional configurations of an economico-political nature. He sees the ongoing historical processes as the result of the contact, connections, crossovers, and clashes of both these types of configurations. The central theme for Krejc^í was the issue of civilization, to which he devoted his thought for a large part of his life and a series of works, such as The Civilizations of Asia and the Middle Eastbefor the European Challenge (Krejc^í, 1990), The Human Predicament: Its Changing Image (Krejc^í, 1993), and particularly Postiz^itelné proudy de^jin (Intelligible Currents of History) (Krejc^í, 2002), a work that summarizes the author’s basic understandings, ideas, and conclusions. Krejc^í describes civilizations as socio-cultural formations characterized by a certain historical progress, growth, structure, temporal and spatial variability, and in some parts of the world by reciprocal

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links. Krejc^í works with the concept of civilization in the singular and also in the plural (Krejc^í, 2004). He notes that civilization (in the singular) “relates only to that part of humanity which has reached the stage of development of civilization in the Morganian sense, which means a distribution of labor, city life and written records of thoughts, ideas and events. What is beyond this point can be called civilization’s starting place, in both historical and spatial terms” (Krejc^í, 2002, p. 30). Krejc^í analyzes different historical civilizations (in the plural) which have one thing in common: development to a certain level of maturity. Krejc^í, much like Toynbee, identifies several stages which civilizations go through. Toynbee describes these as genesis, growth, breakdown, disintegration, and decay (Toynbee, 1934 1961). Krejc^í himself talks about heroic, founding, classical, retreat, and fatal phases. In the heroic phase, the rising civilization creates new values, eventually redefining traditional values. The rise of a new civilization and decline of the previous civilization takes place in the second, founding period. Then follows the classical period, during which the forces uniting the civilization peak and fulfill their function. The retreat phase coincides with the heroic phase of another emerging civilization, and the fatal phase coincides with the founding phase of this newly-establishing civilization. In the book The Human Predicament and Its Changing Image, Krejc^í states that different kinds of civilization can be distinguished on the basis of differences in their traditions and orientations. He connects the most important difference with what he terms a “paradigm of the human predicament” (Krejc^í, 1993). On the question of the criteria which determine such a fundamental civilizational difference, Krejc^í asserts “a widely shared attitude to the meaning of life and death” (Krejc^í, 2002, p. 47). However, this profoundly philosophical question must be examined from a macro-sociological perspective to see how the act of relating to the whole universe manifests itself in various parts of the world, and — above all — what the consequences are for the lives of individuals. Krejc^í distinguishes six basic paradigms, four of which are still extant, while two are obsolete (ibid., pp. 47 92). The divergence of six basic paradigms of human predicament, according to Civilizational A nalysis

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Krejc^í, is revealed in the attitudes that people adopt concerning the question of human finitude, in six alternative responses to the disturbing fact of human death (ibid., p. 92). The Theocentric paradigm arises from the belief that there is something essentially sovereign outside man himself, which is God. This superior power is unimaginable and unpredictable; the individual is in a dependent position, believing in divine justice and God’s mercy, and death is accepted and legitimized as God’s will. The theocentric paradigm is dominant in Islam. The Anthropocentric paradigm assumes that a person has no hope of life after death, and therefore focuses on indulging in the pleasures of worldly life, because after death this will no longer be possible. However, the absence of belief in an afterlife does not mean displacement of the phenomenon of death. The fact of human mortality must be satisfactorily dealt with; in other words, death must be somehow legitimized and incorporated into the philosophy and science of a symbolic universe. The anthropocentric paradigm is the dominant principle of interpretation of the world of Western civilization. The third paradigm that Krejc^í identifies is Kratos-centric (from the Greek “kratos” — government). People face the prospect of death, and at the same time remain at the mercy and disfavor of the forces of nature and also society; people are thus eager to have a firm hand over them and be guided, even at the price of restricting their freedom because of the strong government necessary for a sense of security and safety. The Kratos-centric paradigm is associated with Confucianism and can be found in China, where its strong roots have facilitated one-party rule. In the fourth — Thanatos-centric — paradigm, death plays probably the most important role, an attitude typical for instance of ancient Egypt. Death in this case is the disturber of the social order, and ways are sought to mitigate its depressing impact. This leads to what Krejc^í calls necrotechnology, namely, all possible measures to prevent decomposition after death. Egyptian civilization longed for immortality above all, and for the absolute negation of death.

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The negation of death occurs in another paradigm, the so-called psycho-centric, but this functions differently than in the Thanatoscentric paradigm. Death here is negated through the idea of a soul that goes through a continuous cycle of reincarnation. The aim is to overcome the cycle so that the soul extricates itself, resting in a joyous state of nirvana while immersed in the essence of the universe. Hinduism and Buddhism in South Asia are based on this view of life. A special position is occupied by the Cosmo-centric paradigm. This characterized the outlook of the Aztecs and Mayas, and today is a thing of the past. The Cosmo-centric paradigm was an expression of the conviction that the continuity of life, manifested in the regular recurrence of day and night, the seasons, natural phenomena, etc., was not in itself guaranteed and people must actively participate in the cycle of the universe. Man is — together with the gods — partly responsible for the running of the universe and must participate in it through rituals. Witnesses and relics of this are the Central American pyramids, which despite appearances had a different role than the pyramids of Egypt. While in the empire on the Nile they represented the struggle to overcome death, in the Americas they were buildings to enable contact with the universe and tap into knowledge of it (ibid., p. 53). All the above-mentioned paradigms of the human condition constitute different answers to the basic existential questions of humanity. How various people answer these questions determines, according to Krejc^í, to which civilizational circuit they belong. Krejc^í was one of those intellectuals to follow research goals with a long-term passion without having to belong to any recognized research direction or school. On the contrary, much of his work remained unaffected by contemporary trends and commercial considerations. One of the important characteristics of Krejc^í’s research approach was his work with interdisciplinary approaches, to capitalize on his broad knowledge and expertise. Krejc^í always respected givenness and empirical data, which he was able very competently to analyze; this did not prevent him from striving to achieve the highest level of abstract theoretical generalization. Civilizational A nalysis

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Civilizations of the Axial Age One of the most significant representatives of contemporary historical comparative sociology is Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt. Eisenstadt’s research work spanned more than half a century and its continuously evolving research program focused on the issue of long-term historical processes. In the context of world sociology, Eisenstadt gained leading status mainly thanks to publications on civilizations of the axial age, through which he opened research perspectives going far beyond the framework of sociology itself. He latterly pursued this direction by developing the concept of multiple modernities, a very important strand of opinion within contemporary globally-oriented debates. Eisenstadt’s evolving approach to the analysis of cultures, civilizations, and modernities was retrospectively characterized by Matthias Koenig as “an ever-changing game of raising theoretical and historical-comparative issues… based on integration rather than confrontational theoretical discussion” (Koenig, 2005, p. 43). Eisenstadt’s sociological work is notable for its synthesizing and interdisciplinary nature, connecting sociological, historical, and political science, cultural anthropology, and philosophy. Eisenstadt broadens the perspective of structural functionalism by the gradual integration of elements drawn from alternative ideological currents and creates a monumental sociological work both original and pioneering due to its content, theory, and methodological contribution. Eisenstadt was born in 1923 in Warsaw. After the early death of his father (1930), his mother emigrated with her son to Palestine and settled in Tel Aviv. Eisenstadt studied history and sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. There he was significantly influenced by his teacher, the philosopher Martin Buber, under whose guidance in 1947 he defended his thesis The Essence and Limits of Social. From 1947 to 1948, he spent his postdoctoral period at the London School of Economics, returning to the Hebrew University from 1948 1962 to lead seminars on the comparative sociological analysis of political systems. There in 1950, he took

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charge of the Department of Sociology and in 1959 received his professorship. From 1955 to 1956, Eisenstadt held a scholarship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences at Stanford in California. During this stay, he visited several scientific institutions (Harvard, Michigan, Minnesota, Chicago, Princeton), where he worked with others on the methodology of comparative sociology, especially with James S. Coleman, Robert Dahl, Alex Inkeles, and Seymour Lipset. Within the framework of research into historical bureaucratic empires, he established cooperation with Raymond Aron, P. M. Blau, Sinologist J. K. Fairbank, and Arabist Bernard Lewis, holding guest-professorships at the universities of Chicago, Harvard, Michigan, Oslo, Copenhagen, and Bergen. In the 1950s, Eisenstadt dealt with the issue of the integration of immigrants into Israeli society: The Absorption of Immigrants (1954) and the issue of generations: From Generation to Generation: Age Groups and Social Structure (1956). The first phase of Eisenstadt’s theoretical development, lasting until about the mid-1960s, was significantly influenced by the structural functionalism of Talcott Parsons, and its major output was The Political System of Empires (Eisenstadt, 1963), which attempted to overcome weaknesses in Parsons’ theory. In 1965, he published Essays on Comparative Institutes, and in 1966 Modernization, Protest and Change. He also published a breakthrough structural functionalist analysis with Israeli Society (1967), in which he describes the development and structure of Israeli society in various segments through social differentiation. After The Protestant Ethic and Modernization (1968), he published a textbook on Political Sociology (1970). Subsequently, in Tradition, Change and Modernity (1973), Eisenstadt addressed the sociological theory of modernity. In 1976 with M. Curelaru, he published The Forms of Sociology, often referred to as the manifesto of neofunctionalism. In Revolution and the Transformation of Societies (Eisenstadt, 1978), he returned to political sociology. His turn toward the civilizational theoretical research program is represented by The Axial Age: The Emergence of Transcendental Visions and the Rise of the Clerics (Eisenstadt, 1982), whose analysis of the culture of the axial age (see especially Civilizational A nalysis

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Eisenstadt, 1986, 1987, 1992) opened new perspectives on the development of civilization and eventually led him to the diversity of modernities (multiple modernities), which he devoted considerable attention to in a large number of his later publications (Eisenstadt, 2000a, 2000b, 2003a, 2003b, 2006a, 2006b, 2007). In September 2010 in Jerusalem, Eisenstadt’s life and work drew to a close. *** The first turning point of Eisenstadt’s intellectual biography is the book The Political Systems of Empires, devoted to a specific kind of political system known as “historical bureaucratic empires” (Eisenstadt, 1963). These empires represent great epochs in the development of human civilizations: Ancient Egypt, the Hellenistic Empires, the Roman and Byzantine Empires, the Empires of Persia, China, and India, which evolved from other types of premodern political systems to integrate under their supremacy very large territories. They embodied elements of rationally-organized legal states, along with elements of traditional states, and as such represented the most advanced types of premodern political system. The main feature of these realms was the high autonomy of their political spheres (despite foundations in traditional legitimacy), among other things reflected in the relative distinctiveness of their political objectives, differentiation of political roles, and the existence of specialized bodies of bureaucratic administration. The Political Systems of Empires impacted the theoretical debate on modernization processes by highlighting the importance of previous historical development to the present state of society. From today’s point of view, it is also one of the fundamental works of historical sociology, marking the moment of the discipline’s recovery. The general problem which Eisenstadt touches on in this and other publications is the classic sociological problem of social order, its formation, integration, and change. The second phase of Eisenstadt’s research development was characterized by a deepening revision of the structural functionalist approach, gradually modified through initiatives from alternative theoretical currents. The most important inspiration, however, was the historically- and culturally-oriented sociology of Max Weber.

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The book Revolution and the Transformation of Societies (Eisenstadt, 1978) represents the Eisenstadt’s contribution to the debate about the causes of revolutions, begun by Barrington Moore and Theda Skocpol in the 1970s. He understands political revolutions as a specific type of social change in which the coup that occurs in the order of a state combines with a new formulation of its basic symbolic orientations. A prerequisite for such revolutions appeared in the European Middle Ages in the collision between symbolic and structural pluralism. The existence of many overlapping and constantly changing communities, multiple centers standing next to each other, the autonomous access of different groups to various centers and symbolic orientations, along with activism and individualism, all created favorable conditions for the English, American, and French Revolutions, forming a pattern even revolutions outside Europe could follow. *** Although Eisenstadt paid considerable attention to the issue of social change, what occupied his time in the third period of his scientific work was the problem of explaining the existence of longterm stable configurations of symbolic orientations, centers, and institutional arrangements. Eisenstadt moves to a higher level of macro-sociological analysis in the context of this reorientation, wherein the essential frame of reference is the concept of civilization. His starting point in this period is the concept of the axial age (Achsenzeit), a concept borrowed from the German philosopher Karl Jaspers, who used it in the study Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (The Origin and Goal of History) (Jaspers, 1949). The axial age represents the time period from the 8th to the 2nd century BC. The term refers to a period of radical transformation of world view (ibid.). All major parts of the then-known world underwent major transformations in the spiritual sphere, which led to the emergence of still-existing philosophical and religious traditions. In China, India, and also the West there appeared revolutionary new thinking (in the West Plato’s philosophy and the prophets of Israel, followed by Christianity; Zoroastrianism in Persia and Buddhism in India; Confucianism and Taoism in China). Civilizational A nalysis

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A wider reception of Jaspers’ idea of the axial age, crossing the borders of philosophy, appeared in the 1970s via the historian and sinologist Benjamin Schwarz. The debate on the axial age concerned how to fit modernity within the framework of the historical trajectory from which it arose (Arnason et al., 2005). Eisenstadt incorporates it into the explanatory framework of historical comparative sociology, thus developing an original analytical and comparative approach to examining the specifics of particular civilizations. Eisenstadt moves the interval of the axial age to encompass the period from the 5th century BC to the 1st century AD (Eisenstadt, 2006b, p. 253). Changes in individual axial civilizations are based on specific symbolic orientations characterized by tension between transcendent and mundane orders. In the axial age, a “conceptualization” and “institutionalization” of the relationship between the transcendental and the mundane orders took place, so that the two worlds were separated and subsequently bypassed by a higher moral and metaphysical order (Eisenstadt, 2003a, p. 199). While in the previous mythical cosmologies this world and the next are considered homologous orders and an ontological continuum, in the axial age a discontinuity emerges between the two, making the here and now seem deficient. The rise of the transcendental had the consequence that the individual was viewed as one who needs to be saved, and the social world in need of moral reconstruction. In the political sphere, the concept of the divine king was replaced by the idea of rulers’ responsibility under the principles of the transcendental order. The stratification hierarchy was supplemented by new prestige positions, deriving their legitimacy from transcendent models of order. Even the overall shaping of social structures gained a new look. Boundaries of togetherness and solidarity were newly constituted through universal sacred codes, due to which communities emerged that crossed ethnic boundaries. Once various new social forms of institutionalized, elite groups could be considered legitimate bearers of the transcendent order, the construction of centers brought them into conflict with competing groups. Protest movements arose, and heterodoxy with

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sometimes utopian orientations. The alternating constellations of political elites, intellectual elites, and protest movements established historically new kinds of social change (Koeing, 2005, p. 56). Heterodoxies represented one of the main sources of civilizational dynamics, and in the monotheistic religions, especially in Western Christianity, became a source of the changes that originated modernity. By contrast, the lack of heterodoxies in Buddhism and Hinduism resulted in social stagnation (Eisenstadt, 1995, pp. 294 297). The trend that brought the axial age was followed by secondary reorientation and reformation of the original axial heritage, one of which was Christianity’s blending of Greek and Jewish traditions; others included the take up of Islam in Asia, Neo-Confucianism in China, or the return of Hinduism in India. Consequently, the most important nodes of axial civilization became, respectively, Western European, Byzantine, Islamic, Chinese, and Indian. *** As mentioned, Jaspers’ philosophy of history was Eisenstadt’s starting point for developing his own historical and sociological interpretative model, in which he compares the 2000 years’ old axial age and the breakthrough of modernity, sometimes referred to as a “second axial age.” He thus attributes to modernity a similar importance: a crystallization of a specific cultural, political, and institutional programme and its expansion across the most of the world (Eisenstadt, 2006a, p. 126). As a result, the author even sometimes specifies modernity as a new, different civilization (Eisenstadt, 2003b, p. 493). In considering the problems of the axial age, Eisenstadt created a theoretical framework that became the inspiration for broadlyconceived interdisciplinary research and at the same time allowed the sociological debate to reformulate the issue of civilizations and civilizational development. In connection with the well-known version of the occidental (Western) path to modernity of Max Weber, and in certain contraposition to it, Eisenstadt focuses on the issue of the modernization potential in non-European civilizations. During the 1990s, the theory of multiple modernities came Civilizational A nalysis

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about, opposing totalizing claims that modernization can only have a single (Western) form. In the concept of multiple modernities, Eisenstadt notes that modernity first established itself in the West, but has spread worldwide, initially through economic imperialism and colonialism, then as a result of globalization. Expanding modernization is not only a catalyst for change but also a confrontation with local cultural cores. The consequence is a range of different modernities for which the original western pattern is just a sort of reference point (Eisenstadt, 2000a, p. 1). The axial age and axiality became the starting point for the reconsideration of problems which Weber encountered in his studies on the economic ethics of world religions. For Eisenstadt, the axial age is a concept that allows him to carry out the systematic comparative analysis of the change-potential of different civilizations, and at the same time opens the way to understanding the various courses of modernization processes. Eisenstadt sees the parallel between the original axial age and the breakthrough of modernity as significant change of the human world view. Modernity, however, is in a way more radical than the axial age, mainly in that its cultural and political programme has contracted out the political, social, and ontological order from the framework of traditional authorities and made it the subject of reflection and ideological rivalry. Politics, once available to the broad masses, became central as a meeting place for various social demands and visions. Along with this, emphasis was placed on the autonomy of man to actively control and shape nature and society. The future was credited with an open character, dependent on the free behavior of people. The cultural and political programme of modernity was formulated, according to Eisenstadt, during “the great revolutions,” starting with the French Revolution. Although these were not as important and significant in shaping modernity as urbanization, industrialization, and the development of the market economy (these processes would probably also have taken place without revolutions), they were of crucial importance in the articulation of its programme (Eisenstadt, 2006a, pp. 131 134). The cultural threshold of modernity is associated with the recognition that the

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social world is not given once and for all, and its status can be changed. Modernity is associated with the ability to challenge existing social arrangements, to correct their form, and understand the future as a realm of alternatives achievable by active human behavior and political participation. Another feature is emphasis on the independence of the individual and emancipation from the ties of traditional political and cultural power. Eisenstadt believes that modernity and westernization are not identical (Eisenstadt, 2000a, p. 3); Western formulas do not represent the only authentic modernity, while playing the role of historical precedent and continuing to be an essential frame of reference for others. Divergent forms of modernity, originating outside the West on the basis of different deep structures of civilization, are identified in Russia, China, or India, for example. The author devoted special attention to Japan as a “pre-axial” civilization (Eisenstadt, 1996). In the contemporary globalization processes associated with the expansion of communications and migration he sees signs of multiple, competing modernization patterns based on responses to the culture of axial and nonaxial civilizations. The story of modernity and modernization differentiation begins in Europe, initially in the form of ideologically diverse projects — liberal, socialist, and nationalist. Further diversification occurs in connection with geographical expansion. Colonialism is associated with the spread of modern institutions far beyond the borders of the Old World, with the United States representing the first radical transformation of the European modernity, arising from military confrontation and ideological definition, and soon understanding itself as a worldwide universal reference point for modernity. This Western version of modernity is taken both as a broadly appealing model, but also at one or another level as unacceptable and even invidious. This arises from a continual selection, reinterpretation, and reformulation of imported ideas (Eisenstadt, 2000a, pp. 1 15), with changes and innovations to institutional and ideological patterns as a result. Eisenstadt places great emphasis on traditions. Individual civilizations according to him are characterized by civilizational memory, through which cultural heritage is transmitted over time. To Civilizational A nalysis

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understand modernity, the author reflects on the influences and impulses that led different civilizations to became modern. Modernity has a fixed universal core, but many cultural and historical variations. In individual societies at different stages of their development, different institutional and ideological patterns of modernity emerge, with the result, not of global homogenization and the hegemony of the Western programme of modernity, but cultural diversity. Eisenstadt seeks to explain the variability of institutional spheres, and the diversity of the cultural programmes of modernity, as a consequence of the dynamics between universal modernization trends and particular traditions, value systems, cultural premises, and historical experiences. Various forms of modernization, however, are the result of positive or negative positioning against the Western project of modernity, which because of its historical primacy acts as an unignorable reference framework. Other vital differentiating elements include clashes and conflicts between various social and political movements. Openness to the cultural and political programme of modernity, according to Eisenstadt, produces a certain fragility and vulnerability in modern organization. One source of this instability is the very question of which principles are to underpin the programme of modernity. This creates a proneness to revolutionary transformation, but also to conservative reaction and regressive tendencies. Fragility and instability are especially felt under democratic systems, whose freedom opens up space to change the boundaries and rules of the political arena (Eisenstadt, 1998). However, even in the cultural and political programme of modernity there appears a number of internally contradictory tendencies. There are antinomies and tensions associated with the clash of various visions of how to realize the ideal of modernity, between “totalizing” and “pluralizing” approaches to the functioning of the world, regarding the relevance of different types of human experience, different understandings of the relations between man, society, and nature, the issue of human autonomy and freedom, or the interpretation of human history. According to Eisenstadt, the so-called Jacobin element of modernity plays the dominant role in the totalizing approach to

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the modern programme (Eisenstadt, 1999, pp. 62 65). By this he means modern ideology distinguished by strong social and cultural activism the tendency to absolutize some dimensions of social order and ideologize politics in its efforts to transform society with reference to a specific transcendental vision. Eisenstadt asserts that it is no coincidence that this Jacobin element in a number of social movements in the 20th century resulted in the establishment of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes. According to Eisenstadt, communist societies were not representatives of traditional or undeveloped social systems, but alternatives oriented against the West’s specified form of modern civilization. However, these societies, due to their internal contradictions, eventually proved to be rather a “distortion” of modernity, which led ultimately to their crash (Eisenstadt, 2003b, p. 692). Among the most important factors in contemporary modernization today are politicized religious movements. Eisenstadt sees fundamentalism as the modern totalitarian equivalent of the heterodox utopian movements among the monotheistic religions of the axial age. He wonders whether fundamentalist movements are diametrically in opposition to the programme of modernity in light of the fact that a number of extremely fundamentalist movements have characteristics in common with modern Jacobinism. Today’s global world, according to Eisenstadt can be characterized as one in which history has not stopped, and there is a continuous reinterpretation of the cultural programmes of modernity, producing not only different understandings of modernity but also attempts toward alternative models. *** The concept of multiple modernities is significantly different from how modernization is understood in sociology by classical authors (Marx, Durkheim, and Weber) and even the authors of the 20th century (e.g., Parsons). Toward the end of this life, Eisenstadt reacted to Fukuyama’s (2006 [1992]) publication The End of History and the Last Man and Huntington’s (1996) Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order. While Fukuyama’s work saw the fall of communism as the victory of Western modernity, or if you like its liberal version, and Huntington’s book on the contrary Civilizational A nalysis

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predicted the clash of civilizations, Eisenstadt’s concept of multiple modernities militated against both visions. He criticized not only the naivism of Fukuyama, which he rebukes for identifying modernization with Westernization, but also the essentialism of Huntington, who understands civilization as primordially given. In line with the philosophy of his master, Martin Buber, Eisenstadt seeks dialogue and understanding. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that modernization processes have their dark side — excesses, damaging tendencies, and traumatic potential, which are referred to as the destructive components of modernity. These include various manifestations of barbarism, associated mainly with the ideological sanctification of violence, terror, wars, and mass slaughter. Eisenstadt notes that the barbarism of our time cannot be interpreted as a return to elements of traditional societies, because it concerns manifestations that are the products of modern societies (Eisenstadt, 2006b, pp. 544 564). Many of these phenomena, although they have their prototypes in traditional societies, have led to previously unseen manifestations, such as the total exclusion or destruction of certain social groups. One of the processes causing these destructive components of modernity to surface is the formation of collective identities, as earlier-given facts disappear and newly formed ideas bring new demands and disputes. The totalizing tendencies of modernity can promote the absolute exclusion, demonization, and ultimately extermination of certain population groups. Therefore, modernity has a contradictory nature: on the one hand freedom, prosperity, and democracy; on the other hand a Pandora’s box of unprecedented destructive potential. The selfdestructive and self-doubting manifestations of modernity have in strength and range no parallel in any previous civilization.

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 VI

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Part

The Modern World, Its Formative Processes and Transformations

What must be clear by this point in our account of historical sociology is that modernization and the modernization processes are core components of it. Let us recall how Karl Marx linked the emergence of modern capitalist society with the original accumulation of capital (Marx, 1962 [1867], pp. 864 940). Many other scholars in the 20th century continued in this economic explanation and emphasized the importance of the capitalist-organized market and its institutions. Such authors include Karl Polanyi (1944) with The Great Transformation, Fernand Braudel (1985) and his work The Dynamics of Capitalism or Immanuel Wallerstein (1974, 1980, 1989, 2011) with The Modern World-System. In opposition to the Marxist interpretation, the standpoint of Max Weber (2002 [1904 1905]) — but also, for example, Werner Sombart in Modern Capitalism — asserts that the emergence of modern capitalist society cannot be explained solely by the original accumulation of capital (Sombart, 1902). Weber argues that the essential condition for the emergence of modern capitalist society was a historically new type of human mentality, the “spirit of capitalism.”

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This spirit of capitalism emerged in Europe’s Protestant regions and was characterized by rationality and asceticism. In addition to Marx and Weber, there is Norbert Elias. Elias’s view on this question is that the prerequisites for the emergence of modern society are not only changes in the economy but also changes in the human psyche and human behavior, and the emergence of the modern state. The forming of modern society, according to Elias, required the emergence of modern personality with modern behavior alongside the institutions of the modern state. Elias describes this development in The Civilizing Process (Elias, 1994 [1939]), in which he says that the two processes are interdependent. A further contribution was made by Michel Foucault, who showed that the emergence of modern society is associated with discipline and surveillance. We can note the similarity between Foucault’s ideas about discipline and surveillance and Weber’s ideas about modern rationalization, linked too with the thought of Elias and his civilizing process. A comprehensive look at the problem of modern society was offered by Talcott Parsons through his AGIL scheme (see Part IV). From this perspective: (A) the economic system of modern society is characterized by industrialism and the capitalist market economy; (G) the political system is associated with a democratic constitution and the existence of civil society, (I) the legal system guarantees basic human rights and the equal application of legal norms to all without exception; (L) the small “nuclear” family is characteristic; the educational system is developed in all its stages; the area of religion is characterized by secularization, losing the influence it had on the various aspects of life in premodern societies. What we have so far not extensively discussed is that the commencement of modern society is associated with the formation of modern nations and modern state units, accompanied by power and emancipation struggles. This is driven by competition and rivalry among different cultures, world views, ideologies, and “modernization projects,” and naturally diverse sociological and politological scientific conceptions. Now, therefore, we focus on these hitherto neglected aspects of modernization processes.

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Pathways to Modern Society In contemporary historical sociology, we very often encounter comparative approaches comparing the character of certain historical events taking place in different places and at different times. Among those who promoted this model of historical comparative sociology after World War II were three American sociologists, Reinhard Bendix, Barrington Moore and Theda Skocpol. All three focused on pathways to the formation of modern societies.

Citizens and the State In the context of American sociology, a special position is occupied by Reinhard Bendix, promoter of the work and methodological approaches of Max Weber. As a refugee from Hitler, he was perhaps more inclined to be sensitive to issues of power and conflict among classes, countries, and societies. While his American colleagues focused mainly on structural functionalism and consensus theory, Bendix turned his attention to issues of conflict, examining nations and nation states in terms of internal and external power struggles. Bendix (1916-1991) was born in Berlin into a German Jewish family, but left Germany when the Nazis came to power. He studied at the University of Chicago and taught as a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Bendix’s bibliography is most notable for two works:1 The first, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait (2006), introduced American readers to the figure of Max Weber, and his sociological contribution. The second, Nation— Building and Citizenship (1996 [1964]), is Bendix’s main work. In this work, Bendix attempts an examination of historical processes in the development of relations between individuals, i.e., citizens, and the state during nation-building, where a new political community is formed through the interaction of states and civil societies. This issue is examined through examples from Western Europe, Russia, Japan, and India (Bendix, 1996 [1964], 1. We may also mention a third work: Kings or People: Power and the Mandate to Rule (Bendix, 1978).

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pp. 39 358). Comparisons of this type subsequently became a typical approach for other American historical sociologists, so that a sub-discipline of historical “comparative” sociology emerged. Bendix concluded that different types of societies are found to react to similar problems in different ways. Bendix did not consider the modernization path in the United States to be the only legitimate and inevitable one. Instead, he believed that each society’s past is important — i.e., the milestones individual societies have passed in their history, and the experiences they have gained. Each national culture is the result of conflicts undergone in the past, and shaped by the elites in leadership positions. One of the important tasks of historical sociology, according to Bendix, is to explore how individual societies and cultures have solved their structural problems.

Different Types of Social Revolution During his lifetime, the left-oriented Barrington Moore (1913 2005) exemplified the solitary researcher standing outside any important group of sociologists or historians in the United States. For the greater part of his career, he worked as an expert on modern Russian history at Harvard University. We will discuss only one of Barrington Moore’s books: The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Moore, 1966), widely regarded as an exemplary as well as typical example of historical “comparative” sociology. Moore used the comparative approach to analyze processes taking place over very long periods in different locations around the globe, and a broadly conceived methodology to find similarities between various historical events across continents and centuries. The events and processes he studied span a striking geographical range, from England, France, the United States, Germany, Russia, India, Japan, to China. Moore was inspired by Marx, but differed from him especially on one point, namely the historical role of the peasant strata. For Marx, the peasantry — hampered by what he called the “idiocy of rural life” — was far less important as a class than the industrial proletariat. Marx saw the peasants as a passive

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mass, not an actor of historical development. In notable contrast, Moore attributes great historical importance to the peasantry and peasant revolts. Moore addresses the birth of modern nation states, a process that did not take place peacefully. He identifies three historical paths to modern society: bourgeois revolution (in England, France, and the United States), conservative revolution or “revolution from above” (in Prussia and Japan), and peasant revolution (in Russia and China). The three types of revolutions affected the further development in these countries in different directions. Countries that underwent bourgeois revolution (England in the 17th century, the French Revolution in 1789, the civil war in the United States) developed democracy (ibid., pp. 413 432), while countries where revolutionary change was imposed by those in power (the case of both Prussia and Japan, which went through such “revolutions from above” in the 19th century) and reforms forcibly implemented by those at the head of the state, later tended toward fascism (ibid., pp. 433 452). Countries where peasant revolutions took place (in Russia in 1917, in China 1948 1949) tended to arrive at communist dictatorship (ibid., pp. 453 483). According to Moore, India represents a specific case, taking over the formal structures of a democratic system, but without the revolutionary radical change associated with cutting off from the past, so that some pre-modern tendencies persist.

Revolutions in the International Context American political scientist and sociologist Theda Skocpol was a student of Barrington Moore. Born in Detroit in 1947, Skocpol studied at Michigan State University and Harvard University. Her academic affiliations were first at the University of Chicago and later at Harvard. On the basis of her dissertation (defended at Harvard), she published her most famous work: States and Social Revolutions (Skocpol, 1979). Skocpol argues that revolutions cannot simply be attributed to small groups of conspirators, but arise as an unintended result of multiple conflicts shaped by a complex of socioeconomic and international conditions. Like her teacher, The M odern World, Its For mat ive P roc ess es and T rans format ions

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Barrington Moore, Skocpol attaches great importance to the peasantry and peasant revolts. She also underlines the significance of international historical context to the respective revolution, and thus complements Moore’s approach with an analysis of the problems of international relations. Skocpol says that modern social revolutions occur in societies which find themselves in a disadvantageous position in the international arena. The term “social revolution” she understands as the rapid and fundamental transformation of the state of society and class structure, guided and partially enacted through class revolts from below (ibid., p. 33; Smith, 2005, pp. 146 147). Skocpol focuses on three cases: the French Revolution of 1789, the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the Chinese Revolution of 1949, which took place following a long civil war. In support of her thesis that revolutions occur in countries which are in some way disadvantaged, Skocpol compares France, Russia, and China to show that all three were characterized by the underdevelopment of their agrarian economies and inability to shift toward capitalist agriculture. In all three countries, rebellion spread among the lower classes, especially among the peasantry. Moreover, the old regimes in all three faced rivals from neighboring states who could draw upon greater economic and military power. Accordingly, all underwent a series of military defeats shortly before their revolutions. Each of these revolutions had similar effects: terminating the influence of the aristocracy, incorporating the masses into the political system, and establishing systems of governance more rationalized and centralized than the previous ones. On each occasion the result was a centralized, bureaucratic nation-state which boosted the potential for the state’s power to be expressed in the international arena.

The Formation of Modern Nations Here we touch on the issue of nations and nationalism, because the development of these phenomena is now seen as an important

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part of modernization processes. Contemporary scholars are still trying to organize the plethora of insights on these issues into typologies.2 A definition of what a nation is was attempted in the late 19th century by French philosopher and historian Ernest Renan, who showed that this is problematic on the basis of race, religion, geography, or common interests. Language is important, but this too was not a necessary condition (see trilingual Switzerland). Thus, according to Renan, the only real principle of a nation is its “soul,” a spiritual principle molded in two ways: by a shared wealth of memories and by the will to continue this common heritage through the desire to live together (Renan, 1991 [1882]). The contemporary author Benedict Anderson understands the nation as an imagined community, an intentional and at the same time limited political community. This follows from the idea that no individual is able to meet all the constituents of their nation, so they must construe them abstractly. Furthermore, any nation — in the imagination of its members — does not cover the entire world, but only a certain part of it. Anderson believes that the birth of modern nations became possible when the role of imagined communities broke free of the great world religions, Christianity, Islamism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. The modern national community is based on the sovereignty of the nation, which finds its expression in the nation-state. A sense of some equality between members of the nation is key, as is the role of language, which, apart from unifying communication, allows a community to be thought of as bordered and homogeneous. The common consciousness of the national community is assisted by modern forms of communication related to book printing and expansion of printed periodicals (Anderson, 1983; Hroch, 1985). Anderson’s concept of the nation can be described as modernist because his explanatory principle is the change brought about by the emergence of modern society. In the next section of this 2. Anthony D. Smith (2005, pp. 43 61), e.g., distinguishes four different paradigms of the nationalism: modernism, perennialism, primordialism, and ethno-symbolism.

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chapter, we focus on two other modernist concepts, by Ernest Gellner and Miroslav Hroch, respectively.

Nationalism and High Culture Ernest Gellner is primarily considered a social anthropologist and philosopher, yet his books very often addressed problems deserving of attention in any survey of historical sociology. Gellner was a liberal thinker greatly influenced by his teacher, Karl Raimund Popper. Holding positions close to Popper’s, Gellner contributed significantly to the discussion of the modernization process, with a notable focus on the issue of nationalism. Ernest Gellner was born in Paris in 1925 into a multilingual Jewish family that lived in Prague prior to World War II. In 1939, Gellner’s family fled from Hitler to England and he joined the Czechoslovak army in exile in England, returning to Prague in 1945 as a soldier. After the war, Gellner applied to study at the Faculty of Arts (Philosophical Faculty) of Charles University in Prague, where he studied briefly but, recognizing that trends in society were leading up to the eventual Communist coup in 1948, he left Prague again and went to England. There he studied philosophy and social anthropology at Oxford and the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he had his crucial encounter with Popper. After completing his studies, he lectured at the Universities of London and Cambridge. From the mid-1960s he visited Prague, where he established contacts with a number of Czech intellectuals. After the crucial year 1968, he maintained contact with Czech dissidents, which led the police to ban him from Czechoslovakia for most of the 1970s. Gellner returned to Prague again in 1990 to participate in the founding of a new institution, the Central European University (CEU).3 He died in Prague in 1995. Gellner’s published output runs to around 20 volumes, so the approach here is necessarily selective. As an anthropologist, 3. This Central European University was moved from Prague to Budapest in 1996.

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Gellner devoted much attention to Muslim societies, conducting the greater part of his field research in Morocco, which was the source for such publications as Saints of the Atlas (Gellner, 1969), or Muslim Society (Gellner, 1981). For historical sociology Gellner is particularly interesting as a leading theorist of modernization and nationalism, particularly in Nations and Nationalism (Gellner, 1983), Plough, Sword and Book (Gellner, 1988), Reason and Culture (Gellner, 1993), Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals (Gellner, 1994), and Nationalism (1998). Gellner summarized his ideas about the forces that shape the course of history in the title of his noted work Plough, Sword and Book. In his own words, Gellner aims to address the forces which structure human history, and to express an original philosophy of history in a comprehensive way. It is in this book that Gellner formulated the idea of three basic stages of human history, a conception sometimes labeled “trinitarian.” The first stage is preagrarian — a world of people who live in hordes or tribes, preoccupied with hunting and gathering. The second stage is agrarian, meaning societies in which agriculture is the main sector of production. The third stage is industrial, modern society, in which industrial production dominates. Gellner considers that the shift from an agrarian to an industrial world took place through a number of lucky coincidences, because the previous agrarian type of society had a strong tendency to immobility, stagnation, and lingering. In addition, there are three forces that structure human history: production — symbolized by the “plough,” violent power — symbolized by “the sword,” and knowledge — symbolized by the “book.” Gellner notes the role played in the three stages of human history by different constellations of these three structuregenerating forces. He notes that they differ especially in their relationship to the functions of production, coercion, and cognition. Gellner was strongly interested in the transition from agrarian to modern industrial society. As mentioned, Gellner did not consider this something logical and inevitable in terms of the philosophy of history; as he points out, agrarian society has a strong tendency toward inertia and immobility, and it was almost a miracle that in Western Europe the metamorphosis occurred which The M odern World, Its For mat ive P roc ess es and T rans format ions

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gave birth to modern society. He thus did not consider the rise of modern industrial society as something determined and inevitable, but the result of a series of historical circumstances that coincided to allow social change. What were these circumstances? Gradually, there took place an increase in the division of labor and specialization. Economic growth was spurred by the scientific and industrial revolutions. Democratic institutions emerged that could coexist with traditional monarchical institutions, and reform themselves. The economy became separated from the spheres of politics and power and started to develop on autonomous market principles. In addition to the traditional faith of Catholicism, there arose reformist Protestantism, and the rivalry between these two religions ended in a stalemate which resulted in a necessary religious and ideological tolerance. A new type of personality emerged which — more than the traditional personality — emphasized individuality, autonomy, free will, and the ability to make decisions. Finally, the development of modernity was helped, according to Gellner, by geography and demography: Europe was a territory of many countries and cultures, which proved notably beneficial (Musil, 2007, pp. 378 381). Gellner identifies modern society in terms of three major features: it is free, promotes rationality and science, and is productive and efficient in the economic sphere. All these aspects are interrelated and mutually conditioned. Freedom in modern society allows democratic institutions to exist, provides its citizens a guarantee of civil and political rights, and encourages civil society. In turn, freedom (as noted by Gellner’s former teacher Popper) ensures the flourishing of rationality and science. Modern society demands that its citizens be rational, literate, and educated, thus creating good conditions for the development of education and science. In turn, rationality and education make modern society economically efficient and highly productive based on industry and the application of scientific knowledge. In the area of economic relations, the free market is the foundation which in turn ensures political and social freedoms. As for the theory of nations and nationalism, this subject is addressed especially in two publications by Gellner: Nations and

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Nationalism (1983) and Nationalism (1998). In his view, there are two types of theory which deal with the issue of nations and nationalism: “primordialistic” and “modernistic.” Primordialistic theory claims that nations are ancient, and have existed since time immemorial. Modernistic theory, by contrast, asserts that nations are a modern phenomena, formed only with the emergence of modern society. Gellner himself identifies with modernistic theory. Why did nations and nationalism, in the modernistic paradigm, emerge when they did? Gellner offers the following explanation: for modern industrial societies to function smoothly, a literate and educated population is required. Literacy and knowledge are essential for manufacturing and the military. As a consequence, compulsory school attendance was instituted in modern societies. School education needs to be performed in a systematic, uniform way, and most importantly, in a single language. This cultivation of an educated population through school education is what Gellner (1983, p. 35 ff.) calls “high culture”: the cultivation of a unified model of culture under the aegis of a school education conducted in a written (literary) language. And the creation of high culture in one written language leads, according to Gellner, to the formation of nationalisms. First there is the nationalism of those in whose language the education is conducted. Second there is the nationalism of those whose language is denied this primacy. It is these competing nationalisms that shaped and formed what we now view as modern nations. In this account, we must note, Gellner has completely reversed the established understanding of the concepts of nation and nationalism. Normally, nationalism is understood as something produced by a nation, as a heightened and exaggerated national feeling. Gellner turns this logic around: it is not that nations create nationalism but the contrary (Gellner, 1983, p. 55). The formulation of a modern high culture leads to the creation of nationalism, and nationalism leads to the formation of nations. For Gellner, nations can be defined in two complementary ways: Two people belong to the same nation when they share the same culture (culture being understood as a set of symbols, ideas, thoughts, modes of behavior, and communication). And two The M odern World, Its For mat ive P roc ess es and T rans format ions

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people belong to the same nation when they mutually regard each other as belonging to the same nation (Gellner, 1983, p. 7). Gellner defines nationalism as a specifically political claim that the political unit and national unit should be identical (Gellner, 1983, p. 1). In other words, nationalism is associated with the requirement that each nation should have its own “national” state. The invocation of such a demand as a necessary requirement — most often by small nations, yet no less by large ones — is obviously problematic, and has led to a number of problems. A key problem is that some territorial political units may become ethnically and culturally homogeneous only by killing, expelling, or assimilating all members of other nations and nationalities. Another problem is that nationalism leads to the fragmentation of larger state units into small, fragile and unstable state units. Gellner considered such break-ups of larger state units into smaller states as highly problematic and risky.

The National Interest Miroslav Hroch notes that ideas about nations in the European context have evolved in certain ways. In the English and French language environments, a nation was traditionally associated with a particular state. During the French Revolution a fundamental unifying element of the nation took place in the French language environment; in the English environment on the contrary the emphasis remained on affiliation with the state as a whole. In the German and Central European context, ethnic cultural distinctions and language were perceived as decisive. Hroch gives a definition of a nation as a large social group of people, equal and connected by relationships under formation for centuries that are, among other things, linguistic, cultural, political, geographic, and economic. None of these is necessary and irreplaceable but three factors are necessary for the existence of the nation: (1) a higher degree of communication addressed inward to the community compared with communication directed outward; (2) consciousness (more precisely collective memory) concerning a

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common past; (3) the concept of equality of all members of the nation (Hroch, 1996, p. 8). The historical process of nation-building originated many centuries ago. In the first phase (the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times), ending in the 18th century, basic ethnic and political ties were formed which led on to the second phase, the nation-building process. This second phase was decisive for the formation of modern nations. The commencement of national movements according to Hroch was the result of a deep crisis in the late feudal system, which led to the loss of its legitimacy, and may be associated with the onset of capitalism, industrialization, rationalization, and centralization. At that time in Europe, there were several state-nations and a large number of non-ruling ethnic groups. As a consequence, the process of modern nation formation occurred in two typologically different ways; first via the military/political formation of a nation state and second by way of national movement, in which a given ethnic group had to gradually work and fight its way up to national identity (Hroch, 1996, 53 ff.). New national identities can be understood, according to Hroch, as national consciousnesses. In state-nations, this identity is based on belonging to the state, not on affiliation with culture (not all state-nations are mono-ethnic). Among the influences on the formation of this identity in the 19th century, alongside modernizing tendencies, were the emerging ideas of civil rights and equality. Nevertheless in the context of multi-ethnic empires, there were more than 30 ethnic groups in Europe that did not have their own state (or whose medieval statehood had been interrupted or weakened). These ethnic groups had neither their own ruling elites, nor full-fledged traditions of literary language. For these groups, as mentioned, transformation to modern nations took place through national movements. Hroch understands this as a transformation of ethnic identity into national identity, thus rejecting Gellner’s idea that nations were created by nationalism, which implies that these ethnic groups had no identity before the emergence of the national movement. The M odern World, Its For mat ive P roc ess es and T rans format ions

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The course of national movements among these ethnic groups ran in three phases, according to Hroch. In phase A, the ethnic group, their customs, traditions and culture become a subject of enlightened research and the professional interest of certain groups of intellectuals. Phase B links to national agitation, i.e., with the effort of a certain part of a given ethnic group (“patriots,” mostly intellectuals) to obtain the idea of belonging to the nation for all its members. Phase C, finally, refers to a period when national agitation achieved such success that the idea of belonging to a nation attracted broad masses of the population and one could talk about the creation of a national interest. This is usually associated with the contradictory force generated by the sense that the satisfaction of the majority interest is contrary to the interests of other ethnic groups, implying resistance (Hroch, 1996, pp. 13 14). The requirements of national movements followed comparison of their situations with those which formerly existed in their state-nations, and usually channeled into three main areas. There were cultural and linguistic requirements (the codification of the standard language and its cultivation into a form of literary language); social requirements (the removal of the subordinate social position of a given ethnic group); political requirements (the participation of the nation in political decision-making and the administration of the state). Cultural, linguistic, and social demands were usually made during the second phase of development of the national movement (phase B); political demands mostly took place during the third phase (C) (Hroch, 1985, pp. 25 30). Hroch, like Gellner, emphasizes objective social conditions for the formation and mobilization of national groupings related to the dawn of modern industrial society, although their theories contain a number of differences too (Hroch as mentioned rejects Gellner’s concept of nationalism). The important thing they have in common though, is that they distance themselves from various forms of primordialism and understand the formation of nations as connected with the processes through which contemporary society was born. Not all researchers dealing with these issues,

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however, agree with this approach,4 and so — as in other areas of historical and sociological research — we navigate a field that is highly diverse, characterized by contradicting ideas, and furthermore constantly changing. In other words, this thematic area demonstrates something which is the common condition of all historical sociology — the differentiation of fundamental assumptions of its thought. In the forthcoming paragraphs, we examine other such a fields of divergent opinions and controversies.

The Dark Side of Modernization Most considerations on processes of modernization have been, and sometimes still are, either explicitly or implicitly prisoners of notions about upward social development; in other words, “progress.” The experience of humanity during the 20th century and beyond has shown, however, that efforts toward radical modernizing may also have a very dark side (Nazism, Stalinism, wars, violence, killings). Among those to point out this dark side of modernity most extensively is Zygmunt Bauman, who in his work Modernity and the Holocaust (Bauman, 1989) showed that the greatest crime that took place during the 20th century — the mass slaughter of the Jewish people during World War II — was not contrary to the logic of modernization development but worked with its flow, using the options that modernization had brought forth. Bauman indicates that it was actually a sort of perverse form of social engineering which relied on the state apparatus and a rational, bureaucratic management system. Its enactment was rationalized by pseudoscientific arguments and the realization of its murderous intentions utilized a powerful system of modern transport and industrial technologies. Here we are concerned with theoretical approaches to detecting and analyzing such dangerous tendencies, and theorists engaged in the criticism of the so-called 4. Criticisms of the modernist conception and demands to overcome the opposition between primordialist and modernist approaches were made, for example, by ethno-symbolism, which was developed by Anthony D. Smith (1998, 1999).

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totalitarianism. Of particular importance are three authors: Hannah Arendt, Karl Raimund Popper, and Raymond Aron, whose ideas significantly relate to historical sociology. First, it is advisable to consider how to understand the terms totalitarianism, totalitarian regime and totalitarian state. Various contemporary researchers define the characteristics of totalitarianism in different ways. Let us therefore briefly set out the most frequently mentioned properties of totalitarianism in the theoretical literature. Totalitarianism is a system that tries as much as possible to control and dominate lives, where power is concentrated in the hands of one political party and leader, removing all previous democratic institutions from society, either completely destroyed or converted to serving totalitarian power instead of resisting it. Totalitarian power is based on the political usage of the army and police. Especially important is the role of the secret police, spying and denunciation. People who are perceived as in opposition are arrested, imprisoned, placed in internment camps, and killed. Moreover, totalitarian power references its own totalitarian ideology, so that all such activities are justified by reference to noble ideals. Totalitarian power uses censorship to control the communication media, newspapers, television, etc. and attempts to control the economy and the means of production, and reduce the possibility of the free development of the market economy.

The Banality of Evil Trained as a philosopher, Hannah Arendt dealt mainly with ethics and political philosophy instead of direct social observation, but her work contained important sociological ideas. Arendt was born in 1906 in Hanover (Germany) into a Jewish family. She studied philosophy under Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers in Heidelberg. After the Nazis came to power, she emigrated first to France, then to the United States, settling in New York where she was active at the New School for Social Research (now New School University, but known as the “University in Exile” at the time of World War II). She died in 1975.

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In her highly prolific oeuvre, Hannah Arendt wrote several works that are of direct interest from the perspective of historical sociology. First among them, both chronologically and in terms of public reception, is The Origins of Totalitarianism, in which the phenomenon of totalitarianism was first given broad analysis from the perspective of its historical origins and modern manifestations (Arendt, 1951). Arendt examines the genesis of totalitarianism in historical processes that date back to the 19th century, especially in the context of the development of anti-Semitism, imperialism and the formation of the so-called mass society. Totalitarianism is enabled by mass movements that are controlled by totalitarian leaders and their ideologies. Totalitarian systems usually replace the previously existing “pluralist-democratic” systems with the government of one party. Their instruments of rule include propaganda and terror, as for those who do not comply with their power there are concentration camps which are places of dehumanization and liquidation. Latterly, Arendt (1965) produced On Revolution, foreshadowing an important theme of contemporary sociology, the comparative study of revolutions. Here, Arendt compares the French and American Revolutions, or more precisely the American struggle for independence. In this comparison, Arendt expresses her appreciation especially for the American Revolution, which gave birth to the U.S. Constitution and the American democratic system. Among her final works, On Violence (Arendt, 1970) also addresses a topic of great significance for historical sociology — violence in politics and power struggles, primarily from a philosophical point of view. In the 1960s, Arendt attended the trial of the Nazi war-criminal Adolf Eichmann, which took place in Jerusalem. Her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (Arendt, 1963) made its place in social thought through the description and conception it offered of the “banality of evil.” Arendt coined this phrase to describe the previously unprecedented situation that the greatest crimes during World War II were committed by people who did not have to kill anyone with their own hands. What makes evil banal in this case was how Eichmann was able to The M odern World, Its For mat ive P roc ess es and T rans format ions

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murder several hundreds of thousands, or possibly even millions, of European Jews through simply attending to his job: organizing transports to the Nazi death camps. He committed his crimes from the safety of his office desk — a “Schreibtischtäter” (desk murderer) who supposedly never considered the consequences of his actions.

Advocate for the Open Society The philosopher Karl Raimund Popper primarily worked in the area of the philosophy of science (1959, 1965), where he is the main representative of a current of thinking known as “critical realism” (Popper, 1965). For our purposes, however, Popper is of greatest interest for several writings that touch upon the issues of historical sociology and at the same time contribute to the critique of totalitarianism Karl Raimund Popper was born in Vienna in 1902, the son of a Jewish lawyer, and graduated from the University of Vienna. The rise of Nazism in Austria forced Popper to emigrate to New Zealand, where he taught at the University of New Zealand. After World War II, Popper lived in the United Kingdom, where his academic base was London School of Economics. He received a knighthood in 1965 and died in 1994. From Popper’s bibliography, two books stand out: The Poverty of Historicism (Popper, 1957) and The Open Society and Its Enemies (Popper, 1962a, 1962b). Both were written during World War II and published only after the war. Both originated with difficulty because Popper did not have access to a good library in New Zealand. He also had a large teaching load, and thus little time for writing. The key concept in Popper’s philosophy of science (critical rationalism) is the concept of falsifiability. Popper emphasizes the principle of falsifiability against the principle of verification (Popper, 1959). His view is: We can never prove the truth of a sentence, but we can prove that a sentence is false, that is to say, the sentence: “all ravens are black” can never be proven because you can never say that you have seen all ravens. But if you see just one white

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raven, this sentence will be refuted. If we want to be rational, we must give up the idea that our sentences are based on truth. On the contrary, only a prediction that exposes itself consciously to the risk of refutation on the basis of empirical observations can be considered rational. Science must be built — according to Popper — in a way which is open to falsification and prepared to abandon all thoughts that have been refuted. Another part of Popper’s philosophy of science is the theory of three worlds. The first world is the world of physical states, the second is the world of psychic (mental) states, while the third world is the theories and knowledge which “live” their own lives and create the world of science. Popper’s philosophy deals with the question of how this third world — the world of science — should be organized according to what is beneficial for it against what is harmful. Popper says that science is best developed in a free, open society — while an un-free, closed society cannot foster the development of science. The principle of falsification on which science must be based prospers in a free, open society. In the case of The Poverty of Historicism (Popper, 1957), we should first ask — what is historicism? According to Popper, historicism is the belief that there exist definite laws of inevitable historical development, which can be recognized and serve as a basis for predicting the future. Whom does Popper regard as the representatives of historicism? In fact, the book contains no list of theorists and their theories. From the context of his work, however, one clear example is the social dynamic of Auguste Comte, and even more notably the theories of Karl Marx, both of which Popper implicitly rejects in his analysis. What does Popper find objectionable about historicism? First of all he opposes the notion that history is governed by any predetermined laws. Moreover, he rejects the idea of revolution as a fundamental social change: first, because it requires the sacrifice of many human lives, and second, because Popper places against the idea of revolution his own idea of “piecemeal engineering” — small gradual social reforms. Popper is an advocate of reform as social changes of a gradual nature whose development can be monitored so that if they do not work they can be changed. The M odern World, Its For mat ive P roc ess es and T rans format ions

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Revolutions demand many human victims and their development is beyond control (ibid., pp. 64 70), so in what sense do they represent progress? Popper also rejects the idea that we can base our aims on any purported knowledge of the laws of social development from which we can predict the direction of future social development. He argues that what societies and their character are determined by what the people who live in the society know, by their knowledge. As it is not possible to anticipate what people will know in the future, in 10, 20, 50, or 100 years, it cannot be predicted how future society will appear. Simply put, we cannot predict the future state of society. The work The Open Society and its Enemies spans two volumes: Volume I, The Spell of Plato, and volume II, The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx, and the Aftermath (Popper, 1962a, 1962b). Popper’s famous term “the open society” means one based on the following characteristics: democracy, individual freedom, high social mobility, rationality, a critical spirit, and adaptability to social change. The opposite of an open society, a closed society, is naturally its contrary, characterized by undemocratic processes, suppression of individual freedom, restriction of social mobility, inhibition of rationality and criticism, and generally stiffness, rigidity, and non-adaptability to social changes. For Popper, the historic example of an open society is ancient Athens, while its contrary is ancient Sparta. Later examples of open societies include Western democracies, while closed societies are represented by imperial Prussia, Nazi Germany, and the Stalinist Soviet Union. As is evident from the title, Popper’s work addresses the intellectual legacy and influence of the thinkers who contributed to formulating the ideology of totalitarian society. Popper considers the predecessors of contemporary totalitarian ideology to be the ancient philosopher Plato, the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, and especially Karl Marx. One highly unusual feature of Popper’s approach is his evaluation of Plato, forming the basis of the first volume. In the history of philosophy, Plato is regarded as one of the most important figures in Western thought and practically always evaluated very positively. Popper is the exception, subjecting Plato to strongly critical scrutiny, because for him Plato

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is the founder of totalitarian ideology. Popper focuses on Plato’s Republic (in Greek Politeia — πολιτεία), in which Plato describes the ideal organization of society — an order that Popper himself finds to contain the intellectual seeds of totalitarianism.

A Critique of Ideological Myths and Totalitarian Tendencies Raymond Aron was a French journalist, sociologist, political scientist, and historian. Most of his works can be regarded as contributing to the field of historical sociology, yet the focus here is exclusively on a smaller selection of his writings — in particular relating to the criticism of totalitarianism. Aron was born in 1905 to an assimilated Jewish family. His father was a professor of jurisprudence. Aron studied at the École normale supérieure in Paris, finishing his studies in 1928. From 1930 to1933, he undertook a study-visit to Germany, where he not only studied German philosophy and sociology but also witnessed the rise of Nazism to power. During World War II, Aron was in exile in London, as an assistant to General Charles de Gaulle and publisher of the exile magazine Free France (La France Libre). Afterwards he returned to France and devoted himself to journalism. From 1955, he was a professor of sociology at the Sorbonne, and from 1970 to 1978 professor at the College de France. Aron died in 1983 in Paris. He was the author of about 40 books, combining approaches common to philosophy, sociology, political science, and history. Contemporary German Sociology (Aron, 1935) is an early work that Aron wrote on the basis of his study in Germany at the beginning of the 1930s. Aron devoted his closest attention to Max Weber, and it is no exaggeration to say that thanks to Aron, Weberian ideas of individualism first entered French sociological thought. Hitherto, sociology in France had been significantly influenced by Emile Durkheim and his sociological school, and was therefore holistically oriented. Aron’s individualism proved to be of great consequence. Aron introduced French sociologists to a different way of thinking based on this contrary position. It is worth noting that Aron was a contemporary of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, the founder The M odern World, Its For mat ive P roc ess es and T rans format ions

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of existentialism. In their youth the two were friends, connected by a shared intellectual emphasis on the role and importance of the human individual in French thought. Sartre is regarded as the founder of existentialism in philosophy, yet it has occasionally been said that the first existentialist work was Aron’s book An Introduction to the Philosophy of History from 1938 (Aron, 1957). Nonetheless, after World War II Aron broke with Sartre because Sartre tended to Marxism and became a supporter of the Soviet Union, while Aron held positions of liberalism and preferred western democracy. Aron’s Introduction to the Philosophy of History is an even more open rejection of Durkheimian sociology as a science of supra-individual social facts, with much greater significance assigned to the role of the individual in society and in history. The human individual, in Aron’s conception, is not constrained merely to the position of a “servant” of inevitable laws of history, but always has a degree of freedom in individual action. After World War II, Aron devoted his attention to the international situation, particularly the issue of the Cold War. The first results of this political engagement are two books: The Great Schism (Aron, 1948) and Chains of War (Aron, 1951). At the end of his life, Aron continued to study the issue of war. The result was his work Rethinking War (in two volumes) with the subtitle Clausewitz5 (Aron, 1983 [1976]). Aron was also involved in discussions about the nature of modernity and contemporary society. In the 1950s and 1960s, he put forward the view that this was primarily an industrial society, as discussed in detail in his book 18 Lecures on Industrial Society (Aron, 1967). The history of sociology was another subject of investigation in Main Currents in Sociological Thought (Aron, 1965, 1968a). In the immediate post-war decades, when the vast majority of French intellectuals were Marxist-oriented, Aron was an exception, alone in his adherence to liberal positions and critique of Marxism as a totalitarian ideology. Evidence of this isolated yet firm stand 5. Carl von Clausewitz was a Prussian general and theorist of war in the late 18th and 19th centuries.

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is best displayed through two books: Opium of the Intellectuals (Aron, 1955) and Democracy and Totalitarianism (Aron, 1968b). Opium of the Intellectuals (1955) is perhaps Raymond Aron’s most famous work. The rather strange-sounding title is a paraphrase of Marx’s famous statement concerning religion. Marx once said: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed being, the feeling of the heartless world, the spirit of hopeless conditions. It is the opium of the people” (Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right). In turn, Aron assigned the term “opium” to Marxist ideology, arguing that Marxism had the same effect on French intellectuals as Marx ascribed to religion on the masses. Let us recall that after World War II almost all prominent French intellectuals — except Aron — succumbed to the allure of Marxism, leaving Aron isolated in his support for liberal democracy. Why did Marxism have so many uncritical followers among French intellectuals? As Aron saw it, mainly because it was what he termed a secular religion. French intellectuals, Aron notes, never cared about facts, preferring in their stead ideologically generated myths. At the same time, Aron expresses wonder that Marxism was so popular in a country which had overcome and refuted Marxist predictions and expectations throughout its development. Aron answers his own wonderment through analysis of what he terms the three Marxist myths: the myth of the Left, the myth of revolution, and the myth of the proletariat. The myth of the Left is interpreted as the belief of Marxists that there exists a unified and eternal Left which constantly promotes the same values. Aron shows that this is not true: left-wing political groups are very diverse, and their goals change through history. Nor, for that matter, is the political Left identical or reducible to Marxism alone (Aron, 1955, pp. 15 45). The “myth of revolution” is the idea that all the problems of capitalism can be solved once and for all through the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the implementation of a communist regime. Aron criticizes intellectuals who prefer revolution over reforms (in this he is in an agreement with Popper) for the trivial emotional perception that reform is boring while revolution The M odern World, Its For mat ive P roc ess es and T rans format ions

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is exciting. Aron emphasizes that just as a reasonable person should prefer treatment before surgery, and reforms before revolution, one should give priority to peace before war, and democracy before despotism (ibid., pp. 46 77). As for the “myth of the proletariat,” Aron shows that the proletariat in the 20th century is a different class than it was in Marx’s time, and therefore it is illusory to expect that the current proletariat will become the main driving force of historical development. As already alluded to, Aron concludes that Marxist intellectuals replaced the idea of the kingdom of God with the idea of communism, and placed themselves in the role of the prophets of this religion (ibid., pp. 78 105). In the period after World War II, discussions took place in sociology about the specific character of advanced societies, and whether they should include both democratic and totalitarian variations. In this debate three major perspectives emerged. One was held by the representatives of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, influenced by Marxism, who labeled contemporary Western society with the term “late capitalism.” The second stream was represented by Talcott Parsons and the American sociologists who began employing the term “modern society” after World War II. The third stream was represented by Aron, who used the term “industrial society” at that time.6 Aron argues that the essential feature of contemporary developed societies is that they all have an industrial character. Aron argues there are two types of industrial societies: Western industrial society, based on a market economy and political democracy, and the Eastern — Soviet type of industrial society, based on a state-controlled and planned economy and the rule of a single political party (Aron, 1967, pp. 85 107). Some of Aron’s contemporaries (but not Aron himself) made the assumption that in the future both types of industrial societies would grow closer together and converge, a standpoint then called convergence theory. This convergence 6. Let us recall that Aron did not invent this term, because Comte and Spencer had already spoken about industrial society nearly a century previously.

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theory originated during the time of a growing thaw in relations between East and West in the mid-1960s. After 1968 and the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the armies of the Warsaw Pact, however, this approximation of East and West ended, dealing a mighty blow to the theory of convergence. At the end of the 1960s, the term industrial society went out of fashion as a new concept was emerging, that is, post-industrial society, represented most notably by Alain Touraine (1971) in France and Daniel Bell (1973) in America. According to Bell, contemporary Western society was post-industrial because the crucial economic sector had become a tertiary sector — the service sector — and the most important branch of the economy was not the production of goods, but the production of information and knowledge. In fact, as Bell and other observers argued following the fall of Communist states between 1989 and 1991, totalitarian social orders found it impossible to make the shift into post-industrial society in the way that Western democracies had done.

Wars, Conflicts, and Violence Anthony Giddens in his book The Nation-State and Violence points out that the overwhelming majority of theorists make a substantial simplification by constructing sociological models of society “at rest,” i.e., during times of stability (this was a criticism, as we have seen, which was levelled at Talcott Parsons, but also against many others). This alarmingly ignores the fact that social integration, arising with the emergence of the European nation states in the late 18th century, was crucially affected by military actions and wars. The modern state was born in wars and its institutions had a substantial share in preparation for it. Civil rights and social measures according to Giddens (1985, pp. 232 235) usually originated in situations where states mobilized their populations, or wanted to ensure their support. The inclusion of the population within the institutions of the modern state took place not only as an act of vesting civil rights, but also as an incentive to offset compulsory military service. Giddens (ibid., pp. 236 254) understands The M odern World, Its For mat ive P roc ess es and T rans format ions

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both world wars in this context as transformative for the institutions of contemporary society. World War I and the need for the loyalty of the workers led, inter alia, to the definitive establishing of the labor movement within the state. Going beyond this, there are technologies which were developed first of all for military purposes, and only later went into civilian production. In short, contemporary sociology too often tended to forget that the shape of modern societies is to a considerable degree a product of the armed conflicts and violent clashes through which they have passed. Nevertheless in contemporary historical sociology there are important personalities whose research work is essentially devoted to just this neglected topic of wars, military conflicts and violence: notably Charles Tilly and Michael Mann.

Coercion and Violence Charles Tilly (1929 2008) was one of the most famous students of the aforementioned comparative historical sociologist Barrington Moore. Tilly is known for his contribution to several areas: as a theorist of historical sociology, as an analyst of social movements, social protests and violent behavior (Tilly, 1978, 2004), and as the author of broad overviews of European history. Born in Lombard, Illinois, Tilly studied sociology at Harvard University and lectured at several American universities, including the New School for Social Research and Columbia University, authoring over 50 books, of which three are discussed here. Tilly’s works of a synthetic nature include the book Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (Tilly, 1984), aimed at assessing major scholarly achievements in the field of comparative historical sociology, and especially the work Coercion, Capital and European States, AD 990-1990 (Tilly, 1990), in which he asks how the formation of modern states and economies in Europe has taken place since the early Middle Ages. Unlike authors addressing this matter from Marxist positions, unilaterally emphasizing the importance of economic processes, Tilly sees a second factor, and at the same time perhaps an even more important one, in terms of the formation and concentration of military power.

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At the very beginning of his professional career, Tilly wrote a historical study entitled The Vendee (1976 [1964]), in which he touches upon the problems of revolution, or more precisely, the problem of counter-revolution in the French west-coastal region of Vendée in 1793. Many historians overlooked the revolt in the Vendée, because it did not fit into the scheme of the French Revolution as a social conflict of the oppressed against the oppressors, in which only the aristocracy stood on the side of the monarchy, while the people took the side of the revolution. The revolt in the Vendée showed — on the contrary — that the French monarchy and the Catholic Church enjoyed considerable support from the masses. The main goal of Tilly’s study is to answer why the uprising broke out where it did. The author rejected the traditional explanation that the uprising against the revolution occurred because the peasants themselves felt threatened — like the clergy and nobility — by revolution. Instead, he demonstrated that the key to the explanation of these events was the process of urbanization, which placed more and less urbanized social groups and locations in opposition to one another (Tilly, 1976 [1964], pp. 339 340). The revolt in the Vendée, in Tilly’s interpretation, was a reaction against the processes of modernization, which had adversely affected a traditional and conservative agrarian region isolated from the outside world and unable to accept the demands of modern times. Tilly’s magnum opus is the book Coercion, Capital and European States (Tilly 1990), which deals with the long-term historical processes which formed the states on the European continent over a millenium. The two main factors that contributed to this formation were economic resources and the means of violent power. In line with this assumption, he sees parallel processes: (a) the accumulation and concentration of economic capital, based on exploitation, and (b) the accumulation and concentration of power resources, which are the source of coercion. Tilly concludes that the developmental transformations of European states were determined by these two fundamental processes (ibid., 16 ff.). The issue of state formation Tilly associates with the problem of the centralization of political power in a given territory. The state The M odern World, Its For mat ive P roc ess es and T rans format ions

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in his conception is the organization that has power-priority with respect to all other organizational units in the area, i.e., a monopoly on power coercion (ibid., p. 5), which enables it to exact obedience from the subordinate population (in this we find echoes of Elias). The form and size of states can differ: on the one hand they may be city-states and on the other hand large empires. According to Tilly, the basic driving forces in state formation were wars caused by attempts of individual state units to keep control over resources, combined with efforts to expand these resources further. Wars have always been an expensive affair, requiring considerable mobilization of both types of resources — violent power (i.e., the formation of the army) and finance (acquired mainly by tax collection) (ibid., pp. 20 28). The expansion of a dominant power usually meant greater possibilities for economic exploitation (the extraction of capital). A state entity that did not expand not only deprived itself of the chance to improve its position, but risked succumbing to another, stronger rival. Tilly characterizes the main trend in the formation of European states as a historical movement toward ever greater concentration of both types of resources — power and money. But this trend was not unilinear, and occurred in different variations (in the Netherlands, e.g., business taxation became the main source of finance, in Russia, by contrast, it was a levy on land), and did not succeed in every case (Poland, e.g., fell apart). Tilly (ibid., pp. 40 47) distinguishes two extended periods, in the course of this development: the first between the years 990 and 1490; the second from 1490 to 1890. At the beginning of the former period in Europe about five hundred territorial units existed (they often took the form of city-states, duchies, bishoprics and independent confederations), in which about 30 million inhabitants lived; at its end, the number of units had reduced to about two hundred, while the population had increased to 80 million. The latter period was distinguished by dynamics whereby the population in the early 20th century had risen to about 600 million while the number of states had dropped to about 25. According to Tilly (ibid., p. 29), taking the entire millennium into account, four evolutionary stages can be distinguished based

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on how the armed forces of the state were organized and financed. These are 1. patrimonialism (lasting until the late 15th century), based on the feudal system of conscription and military commitments; 2. the phase of mediation (1400-1700), in which hired mercenaries became critical; 3. nationalization (1700-1850), when the rulers themselves built their own armies from financial resources at their disposal via taxes; 4. specialization (1850today), in which there was a gradual deepening of the differentiation of the budgetary system and a complexly funded system of military activity.

The Networks of Power Among the historical sociologists currently dealing with the issues of power is Michael Mann, the author of the monumental fourvolume work The Sources of Social Power (Mann, 2012 [1986], 2012 [1993], 2012, 2013). Mann has held academic appointments at a number of universities in the United States and in Great Britain. In he published The Dark Side of Democracy (Mann, 2005), dedicated to the issue of genocide. In The Sources of Social Power Mann focuses on development in the context of social power and power configurations, rejecting conventional monolithic concepts of the social system as a bordered totality. Instead he outlines a theoretical model under which social reality appears as a set of overlapping and intersecting networks of relationships whose essential component is control. Society in this perspective emerges primarily as a multiple, spatially organized set of intersecting power networks (Mann, 2012 [1986], p. 1). Power itself is then characterized as the ability to combine people and space into a certain dominant organization (Mann, 1986, p. 6 31) to achieve defined goals; part of this is the ability to access resources and knowledge of how to control them. Power conceived in this way may be characterized by its extent, intensity, authoritativeness, and diffusion. Mann uses the concept of “Social Power,” which he claims arises from four basic sources, summarized via the IEMP model: ideological, economic, military, and political power (ibid., pp. 22 28). According to Mann, in The M odern World, Its For mat ive P roc ess es and T rans format ions

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different historical periods and in different places we encounter various combinations of these particular types of power. Political and military power, in turn, can be placed under the concept of geopolitical power. Thus defined, Mann follows the development of social power from the time of Mesopotamia (i.e., 5000 BC) to the modern day, uncovering various combinations of distinct types of power in different historical contexts. According to Mann two types of power configuration have recurred in the course of history. One is empires dominated by military power, or empires of domination. The second is civilizations with multiple power players (multi-power-actorcivilizations), acting not only in military and political, but also in economic and ideological fields (ibid., 73 ff.). While empires based on military power tended to crumble and decentralize, civilizations with multiple power players evolved toward the greater centralization. The time span of the Mann’s writings The Sources of Social Power 1-4 is impressive. In the first part, he deals with the history of power from its “beginning” to the year 1760; in the second volume he observes the rise of nation states in the period 1760 1914; the third part is focused on the problems of global empires and revolutions; the fourth part shows globalization tendencies (1945 2011). Arising from multiple historical circumstances, in Mann’s view, there was a gradual shift in the center of power north-westwards (ibid., pp. 539 540) from Mesopotamia and Egypt, across Greece and Rome to Western Europe, which in the 18th century became closely linked by four institutional orders: the capitalist economy, industrialism, the nation state, and multinational, geopolitical, diplomatic civilization, thanks to which developed a form of multi-power-actor civilization.

From the First Modernity to the Second Modernity When we talk these days about modern society and the beginnings of modernization theory, we follow the leads of a series of

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modernization-oriented writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But this is our contemporary point of view and our interpretation of the development of social science thinking. The founders of sociology mostly did not use the concept of modern society and did not talk about modernization theory at all. Modernization theory emerged after World War II and only afterward acquired increasing status. Jeffrey C. Alexander in the 1990s made an effort to analyze its development in the context of previous intellectual tradition.

Story of Modernization Theory Alexander’s Fin de Siècle Social Theory distinguishes four stages in this development, which he terms: (1) modernization, (2) antimodern, (3) postmodern, (4) neo-modernization (Alexander, 1995, pp. 6 64). Each stage has specific features. The first phase of modernization theory is connected with the 1950s and 1960s. The most prominent representative of this phase was Talcott Parsons with his conception of social systems (Parsons, 1960, 1966, 1967, 1971). Modernization theory is connected with the idea that social development is only in one direction, and that direction is shown by contemporary advanced Western societies. If other countries wanted to achieve the same level of maturity, they had to undergo the same developmental course, thereby obtaining the same features as these advanced Western countries: industrialism, capitalism, democracy, civil society, human and civil liberties and rights. Alexander’s so-called anti-modern phase began from the mid60s and achieved dominance in the 1970s (Alexander, 1995, pp. 19 23). At that time Parsons’ structural-functionalist theory was abandoned, and along with it Parsonian modernization theory. The abandonment of modernization theories arose from development experience in the third world, indicating that such countries could not develop according to the model of developed Western countries. As former colonies of developed Western countries dependent on and open to exploitation by the West, their The M odern World, Its For mat ive P roc ess es and T rans format ions

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status hindered them from breaking free and undertaking successful modernization. The exponents of anti-modernization theories were influenced by Marxism. They adapted Marx’s class dynamics to international relations, developing the theory of dependency in which the developed countries were termed the core (or the North), and understood as exploiters. Economically backward countries were in turn termed the periphery (or the South), and understood as the exploited. Among the main leaders of anti-modernization thought in the 1970s was the American sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein, who we have already mentioned as the creator of world-system theory, based on dependency theory. During this period, Wallerstein claimed that the future, not only for countries of the periphery but also for all societies, was not the capitalist route suggested by Parsons and the modernists, but socialism (Wallerstein, 1976). Postmodernism, in Alexander’s conception, is the third phase, beginning in the 1980s. Postmodernism was itself critical of modernization theory, but from a different standpoint and via other arguments than anti-modernism. The ideas of postmodernism were formulated mainly by French intellectuals, which Alexander (1995, pp. 24 25) explains as a consequence of these French intellectuals having been followers of Marxism in previous years, but having gradually sobered up from Marxist beliefs and abandoned them. To avoid having to admit intellectual defeat, they invented postmodernism. One of the key ideas of postmodernism is the end of grand narratives (or the end of “meta-narratives”), i.e., conceptions of long-term historical development usually associated with the idea that historical development is gradually upwards. One of the key thinkers of postmodernism was French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard (1984), who claimed that there are, in principle, two basic grand narratives: the “Marxist narrative” about the future in a communist society and the “liberal narrative” that all problems can be solved by the “invisible hand of the market.” Both narratives (both “stories”) are, according to Lyotard, anachronisms in the postmodern era. The circumstances

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of the present condition make it impossible to believe in these, or any similar, grand narratives. Neomodernism — as indicated by the term itself — represents the return of modernization theory after 1989 (Alexander, 1995, 29 ff.). Neomodernism is based on the experience that most of the “Eastern” countries that ended their socialist systems after 1989 consciously oriented themselves toward what they saw as the Western societal model. At the time, it seemed to many to prove the truth of the original modernization theory of the 1950s and 1960s, which said that there was only one path to modernization, the way shown by advanced Western countries. Observing the countries that abandoned socialism after 1989 appeared to grant this statement truth. Typical of this period (i.e., the 1990s) was the claim of the American theorist Francis Fukuyama (2006 [1992]) of “the end of history.” Fukuyama stated that the collapse of the socialist system showed that there was no other alternative for development than western liberal capitalism. Since alternatives had so decisively failed, moreover, history had actually come to an end, because no other type of development could await. After 1989, it is understandable that the concept of modernization gradually established itself in sociological thinking. Even today, despite much that has happened, it still represents one of the key concepts of historical sociology. One could even say that for historical sociology today, the concept of modernization in its various dimensions is the most important issue. Nevertheless, it is important to note that during the last two decades, the concept of modernization has markedly changed. As we have encountered already in the pages of this book, Historical sociology has abandoned the idea of a single, inevitable, model of modern society, and started working with the idea of “multiple modernities.” The founder of this concept was the aforementioned Shmuel Noah Eisenstadt (2000a, 2003a, 2003b) and, following his work up, Peter Wagner (2015) and his collaborators have devoted their attention to international comparative research of modernization processes in recent years. The M odern World, Its For mat ive P roc ess es and T rans format ions

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The Transformations of Contemporary Societies Since the late 1960s, there have been assertions that advanced Western societies have stepped into a new phase of development. One of the first to point to this was Daniel Bell (1973, 1976). Following analysis of changes to professional structures taking place in technically advanced countries (manpower shifting from agrarian and industrial sectors to the tertiary sphere), he postulated the coming of a post-industrial society. Bell’s interpretation of post-industrialism went further; however, in his conception future society was “a society of education and knowledge.” Bell assumed that the number of occupations with academic and technical qualification would increase, the importance of theoretical, scientific knowledge would grow, and experts would have the final word. While the factory as a place of production of material possessions was the fundamental institutional element of industrial society, in post-industrial society the crucial institution would be the university, because scientific rationality increasingly affects the economic, social, and political sphere. The arrival of post-industrial society was heralded not only by Bell but also by other authors. Zbigniew Brzezinski characterized this as a “technetronic” society (based on a combination of technology and electronics), Alain Touraine as a “programmed” one (a techno-economic society programmed and politically controlled by technocratic power), while Alvin Toffler termed it “superindustrial.” It may be recalled in this connection that even early in the 1970s Alvin Toffler (1970) registered the onset of fundamental and inexorable technical changes whose pace would intensify, leaving some people satisfied with the speed of change, but many feeling “shock.” The basic characteristics of the new — according to Toffler — super-industrial society are newness, variety, and transience. People are showered with new objects and impulses to such an extent and in such variety as to be unprecedented. Consequently, their relations to the surrounding world revolve more and more around momentariness and temporality, which once was limited to handling disposables but now relates to

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relations with other people as well. This heightened stimulation, according to Toffler, implies a crucible of human adaptive capabilities, which the author combines with the expression future shock. One way to face this shock is to extend human adaptive capabilities. It was this task, in his view, which should be the task of the new educational system. *** Bell’s theory of post-industrial society is very close to the conception of the knowledge society, whose founder is considered to have been Peter Drucker (1969), who used the expression in his work The Age of Discontinuity and later developed it in other works. In the 1990s, Nico Stehr (1994) and Helmut Willke (1997) among others dealt with the concept of a knowledge society. The knowledge society has also been described through Toffler and Toffler (1995) conception of a society of the third wave (the first wave is connected with Neolithic revolution, the second with industrial revolution, and the third with the start of computerization). Among the distinctive features of the knowledge society is the fact that produced goods are neither valued by the material needed for their manufacturing nor by the working hours spent, but by the knowledge (know-how) needed for their production. The value of the product is determined by the “spent expertise” (Pongs, 2000, p. 247). Willke suggests that increasing production, broadening and exploitation of knowledge has led to the development of new efficient infrastructures, which can be termed “infrastructures of the second rank.” While roads, railways, and power lines represent infrastructures of the first rank, new infrastructures of the second rank — communication technologies — provide fast, extensive and effective global exchange and exploitation of information and knowledge. Time space compression results: as if the world has been made smaller (what was once remote and out of reach is now near and within reach), and the world turned into a “global village” (as Marshall McLuhan discussed in the 1960s, McLuhan, Marshall & Powers, Bruce R., 1992). The idea of a knowledge society is closely related to the term information society. This expression was developed by Yoneji Masuda (1981), and later by Scott Lash (1994). Supporters of this The M odern World, Its For mat ive P roc ess es and T rans format ions

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approach stress that the present era is distinguished by a shift from industrial production to the production of information, whereby production falls to second place behind communication. Increasing numbers of people are dealing with the production, distribution and evaluation of information and new communication and information technologies generate a new society. There is a huge amount of information accessible free of charge but in practice everything acquires the character of information and is viewed according to what it signifies. The result is information shock, which people have to face each and every day. The information society is based on a structure (network) through which information is transmitted; society generally is a sort of network, which has countless access points and is changing constantly. Manuel Castells (1996, 1997, 1998) connects the information age with the start of networks forming new global structures of production, distribution, and control. Castells furthermore notes that networks lead to the dynamic interconnection of what is valuable for the dominant system, while a range of “black holes” in the information society remain at the edge and are sentenced to impoverishment. The possibilities offered by computerization and contemporary information technology lead mostly to the strengthening of our conviction of a growing rationality in the social world and its individual parts. Social science itself is often subject to these images. By its nature sociology tends to look at man as a rational being and at society as a rationally functioning unit. In doing so, it can easily be overlooked that the products of new technologies have ambivalent consequences: besides rationalization they can also support such phenomena as manipulation or infantilization. Today it is the case that new media can more efficiently divert our attention from real problems to insubstantial ones, implanting in us additional artificial needs allied to the wish to be amused and thereby — as Neil Postman (1985) memorably remarked — amusing ourselves to death. As the analyses of Jean Baudrillard (2002) illustrate, today’s problem is the question of to what extent the world we live in is the real world at all.

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According to Baudrillard, in the information society artificial electronic pictures become vocal. As a result, what is (tangibly) real blends with simulation, to which nothing corresponds in reality. Simulacra dominate the human world — man-made signs which are not derived from reality, but from other signs. One could talk about a crisis of representation brought about by the fall of the traditional conception that the human subject is able to reflect reality as a mirror and by deliberation to get to a true picture of the world — the world as it is. Electronic media transform the principle of our life: the television not only represents the world but in a larger sense also defines what it is. Simulacra, growing as fast as malignant tumors, generate a completely new type of reality Baudrillard terms hyperreality. *** In the 1980s, there was a surge in popularity of a theory that could replace modernism, postmodernism. A prominent representative of postmodern thinking was the aforementioned French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard (1984), among whose central ideas were the end of grand narratives (metanarrations — sociophilosophical theories of modernization) and the notion of radical pluralism. Postmodernity had learnt the lesson of the impracticability of courageous emancipatory projects and got rid of the “big story” of emancipation, which had lost its credibility, and instead emphasized differentiation, diversity and the heterogeneity of things and events. Lyotard picks up the theory of language games (Sprachspiele) developed by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, according to which communication takes place through diverse discourses (religion, art, science, etc.) which are mutually “untranslatable.” There are no universal rules for which kind of discourse should take precedence and thus a situation exists of radical pluralism, in which the task of postmodern thinkers is to reflect the heterogeneity of discourses and draw conclusions for practical action and communication. For the German philosopher Wolfgang Welsch, postmodernism is also connected with irrevocable pluralism, whereby society cannot be understood by a single model, either scientific or political; postmodernism acts offensively The M odern World, Its For mat ive P roc ess es and T rans format ions

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in favor of multiplicity and is decisively opposed to all demands, both old and new, for hegemony (Welsch, 2002). The difference between modernity and postmodernity was expressed at the metaphorical level by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman (1995, pp. 9 10), who writes that when modern humanities modeled the world it was, first of all, as a subject for administration and the authorities. It was the world seen from the desktop of the CEO, in which objectives were formulated and realized and general aims were broken down into a series of solvable problems, in which the state of affairs was evaluated according to whether it was approaching or moving away from the shape of affairs scheduled for tomorrow, and in which the main condition for achieving goals was the closeness of the ranks of those to achieve and accomplish them, a closeness achieved through general loyalty toward General Directors in the belief that Headquarters had the right to formulate and delegate such tasks. With some simplification, adds Bauman, we can say that though our life today consists of the arrangement of different issues and solving various problems, the director’s offices have disappeared — in the sense of those who could produce plans mandatory for all people in arranging and solving things — plans in whose name obedience and compliance could be demanded. From the sociological point of view, it is interesting first of all that the concept of postmodernism was not only a subject of philosophical reflection but also the basis of the theory of value change tested in the research of the American sociologist Ronald Inglehart (1977, 1998). Inglehart’s starting point is the statement that technically highly developed societies in comparison with the past have arrived at a historically unique level of abundance. Throughout the course of modernization existential concerns and economic growth stood at the forefront. However, there had been a substantial change, pushing the prevailing materialistic values into second place. Even though the overwhelming part of the population of developed western countries was still oriented traditionally, in a materialist way, an increasing proportion of the population was turning to post-materialist values. This shift could be observed especially in countries that had undergone successful modernization.

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The mutual influence of economic and cultural factors led to a change in priorities causing social change which Inglehart calls “postmodernization.” *** The development of modern industrial society was from the beginning accompanied by the devastation of nature, the looting of natural — especially raw material and energy — resources, air, water, and soil pollution. These issues were brought to the general public’s attention from the early 1970s in alarming reports by The Club of Rome: The Limits to Growth (1972), Mankind at the Turning Point (1974), Reshaping the International Order (1976), Beyond the Age of Waste (1976), Goals for Mankind (1977), and many others. The development of science, technology, and the economy was very fast and their impact on the environment was significant. The global ecological threat was linked to environmental pollution, the generation of waste that could not be easily disposed of or recycled, and the depletion of non-renewable natural resources. This threat was to the very essence of our way of life and impacted all humanity. At a time when the American futurologist A. Toffler was heralding the favorable news that the classic industrial society of “smokestacks” was coming to an end, expectations associated with new technologies were challenged by considering the risks associated with them. Contemporary society was generating hazards (Three Mile Island, Bhopal, Chernobyl, …) which the previous epoch had never conceived of. Along with the subjugation of nature arose new risks which people had no experience of and found unpredictable. The technology of the modern age could be made “safer,” but not “safe” according to Charles Perrow in his book Normal Accidents (1984). By the late 1980s, Ulrich Beck was spreading the notion that modern industrial society produces unintended risks as a consequence of its economic growth and technological development; risks that exceed acceptability and represent selfdestructive hazards. Such a society was a risk society (1992). Anthony Giddens (2000, p. 39 ff.) observes on this point that our time is not more dangerous or riskier than the past, but that The M odern World, Its For mat ive P roc ess es and T rans format ions

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the dangers that we have made (Manufactured Risks) threaten us to the same degree or maybe even more than those that come to us as it were from “outside.” Such human-made risks include not only global environmental hazards, radioactive contamination, or the collapse of the world economy, but also, for example, the risks associated with interpersonal relationships. *** In the 1980s, not all authors accepted the concept of postmodern society. Among these was Anthony Giddens, who in his book The consequences of modernity speaks that as a result of its development humanity found itself at the end of the 20th century on the threshold of a new phase, which he termed radicalized modernity (Giddens, 1990, 3 ff.). Giddens is trying to express that the present basically does not turn away from modernity, but rather strengthens its intrinsic characteristics and tendencies. A cognate of Giddens’ understanding of radicalized modernity can be found in the term second modernity, which Ulrich Beck works with. The first modernity was the “classical industrial society” of the 19th century which disassembled the previous rigid agrarian society. It was the first (simple) modernity which produced the structures of industrial society. This change took place as a conscious and desired turn away from traditional society; it was accompanied by euphoria over the general scientific and technical progress that promised to overcome the shortage of materials. The system of coordinates which hosted the lives and thinking of classical industrial modernity was formed by an axis of family, specialised professions and faith in science and progress. Today according to Beck this “world of the nineteenth century” — with its ideas about nature, automatic progress, national sovereignty, classes, and family — is vanishing. Beck concludes that we are witnessing a turning point where modernity is breaking free from the contours of classical industrial society and taking on a new form. If the “first modernity” was a “modernization of tradition,” i.e., “simple modernization,” the “second modernity” (risk society) represented a “modernization of industrial society,” i.e., a “modernization of modernity” (Modernisierung der Moderne), described as “reflexive modernization” (Beck, Giddens, & Lash, 1994).

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Reflexivity in Beck’s concept is essentially self-confrontation: not any targeted overcoming of a previous stage of social development but an ongoing process based on its own dynamics, propelled ever onwards by the scientific and technological development. The distinction between the first and second modernities relates to Beck’s risk society concept (Beck, 1992, 44 ff.). The classical industrial society began as a society of “shortages,” whose guiding principle was the production of wealth (represented by scarce goods such as money, consumer goods, and education). The basic problem of this society was how socially produced wealth could be divided in a socially unequal but nevertheless legitimate way. For advanced modernity, the social production of wealth is systematically accompanied by the production of risks. Problems associated with wealth distribution are overlaid by problems and conflicts arising from existing risks which are not an alternative to material welfare, but are a “modernization co-product of welfare.” *** Living in the conditions of a risk society is — naturally — risky, but not only due to various threats of a technological nature. In addition to the ambivalence of technological innovations (which, on the one hand, enable a high material standard of living, while on the other hand, produce risks), there are the contradictory characteristics of the modernity process with its increasing individualization. Beck (with Beck-Gernsheim 1993, 1994, and 2002) considers individualization as an increasingly important phenomenon of contemporary society, arising from the release of people from the social formations of classical industrial society. The embedding and cohesion of individuals into classes, families, and social roles typical of the first modernity are obsolete in the second. Once-rigid social structures that tied and limited but at the same time provided people with support and orientation are now becoming very fragile. The rise in individualism is associated with a weakening of traditional solidarity. The result is a different sort of risk; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1994) speaks about “risky freedoms” and the ambivalence of individual self-fulfilment. Problems that individuals previously dealt The M odern World, Its For mat ive P roc ess es and T rans format ions

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with through traditional institutions they must now manage by themselves. When a person gets sick it is assumed that this is because he was not quite thorough enough in complying with a health regime; if he is left without a job it is because he failed to manage the interview or did not look for a job hard enough, or that he has just an aversion to work (Bauman, 2000, p. 34). In individualized life situations uprooted from collective ties, even common problems are transformed to individual problems; social failures and crises appear to be individual failures for which each alone is to blame. *** If the binding link of capital with labor was characteristic of industrial society, today brings the release of these ties. As they weaken, so too does an employment system dating back to the 19th century, characterized by a high degree of standardization of elements such as employment contract, place of work and working hours, which entailed not only boundaries between work and “non-work,” but also boundaries between employment and unemployment. One of the characteristic features of the risk society is destandardization of gainful employment (Beck, 1992, 139 ff.). This includes the loosening of three key elements — employment contracts, workplace, and working hours — leads to a loss of solid form and consistency. According to Beck (ibid.), the transition is from a unified system of lifelong all-day work whose radical alternative is unemployment, to a high-risk system of flexible, plural, decentralized “incomplete” jobs. What was formerly antithetical — formal and informal labor, employment and unemployment — coalesces into a new system of flexi-form, plural, riskier, incomplete work. According to Richard Sennett (1998) in the new flexible economy, there is nothing predictable or calculable. Everything is in motion and subject to continual and even rapid change; everything is episodic, short, and elastic. No-one can be sure that tomorrow they will be doing the same as today. A lifelong bond to one company and continuous employment therewith is no longer realistic. People are forced to face new tasks and adapt to ever-new

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givens, ready to learn throughout life, to study and if necessary to change job and place of residence on demand. Sennett (ibid.) observes that instability is becoming the norm. The ability to begin over again, however, as the author states, requires a special strength of character. His book The Corrosion of Character (in German Der Mensch Flexible — Flexible man) raises the question of how constant changes influence interpersonal relationships, which are he suggests essentially “focused” on long-term aspects. People are losing control over their biographies; lacking a stable sense of themselves and reasons to seek such stability. The requirements of the age are “Nothing of a long-term character” and “Keep moving.” He concludes that the new flexibility destroys human character and threatens society itself. *** One of the problems that contemporary sociology is concerned with is integration, that is to say, what keeps society together. Integration used to be seen from two angles: as system integration and social integration. In investigating system integration, we proceed on a macro-sociological level, above all concerned with the mutual relations of parts (units, subsystems), which together form the societal system. This macro-sociological aspect of integration has already been touched on in the context of organized irresponsibility. Now we move on to social integration, and in doing so we move onto the level of micro-sociology, dealing with individual participants and their activities. In contemporary social science, the question of solidarity and cohesion is analyzed especially through the terms “trust” and “social capital.” For James Coleman (1994), social capital constitutes structures which support the appearance of trust among involved persons, developing informal relations and creating favorable conditions for cooperative acts. The essential outline of the development of modern society is that while the total size of this social capital falls, the physical capital, in the form of created tangible wealth, grows. Coleman points out that social capital does not quite disappear, and, if favorable conditions arise, it can even revive. He considers how lost social capital might be recovered, and even increased, as one of the pressing issues of today. The M odern World, Its For mat ive P roc ess es and T rans format ions

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The idea of a decrease in social capital was developed first of all by Robert D. Putnam (2000). He noted that as the economy in the USA grows, material living conditions improve but society loses the social capital created by networks of human relations and their rules of reciprocity and trust. People are working and consuming more than ever before, but at the expense of time spent together — either in the course of political or civil activities, organized or spontaneous social activities, or around the family table. *** One of the most important manifestations of radicalized modernity, addressed by Anthony Giddens, is “time space compression,” due to which the world is shrinking (formerly distant and inaccessible places are now close and within reach). The dimension of globalization is becoming increasingly important. British sociologist Martin Albrow (1996) characterizes the current global age as having five basic features: (a) environmental damage caused by humans, (b) loss of a sense of security due to the risks associated with the use of atomic energy, (c) new channels of communication resulting from the creation of global networks which overcome time and space boundaries, (d) global business contacts, and (e) the knowledge that thanks to social interactions extending beyond the boundaries we live in a global society. Existing tendencies demonstrate the foresight of Marshall McLuhan, who in the 60s predicted the transformation of the world into a global village. McLuhan put this development in the context of the development of communication media. The real engine of globalization, however, is undoubtedly economic globalization. I. Wallerstein (1974, 1980, 1989, 2011), another much-quoted visionary, speaks of the capitalist world system, representing a radicalization of a development which was until recently known as the internationalization of the world economy. The characteristic feature of this development is that the economic power is becoming concentrated in the hands of powerful multinational companies whose annual turnover exceeds the gross domestic product of many national economies. The power that these companies have is in many respects spinning out of the control of individual national governments. On top of that, there is the globalization of financial markets and development of the so-called

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casino economy (the term Casino Capitalism was in fact coined in the year 1986 by Susan Strange, 1986), which has enabled financial speculators to move huge amounts of money within the global economy. Participants in this new elite are disengaged from commitments and obligations to specific places and people — they are here today and tomorrow they may be elsewhere. Ulrich Beck (1999a) in this context points out that one of the consequences of this process is to sideline the state and politics. Zygmunt Bauman observes that globalization not only unites but also divides; in addition to the emerging planetary dimensions of business, finance, trade, and information, there is a process of “localization,” a fixing to a particular place; these two closely interconnected processes sharply differentiate the living conditions not only of large groups of people, but even whole populations (Bauman, 1998). The process has its winners and its losers. The current global elite according to Bauman (2000, p. 13) rule unburdened by duties of governance, management, or society, or by morally uplifting civilizing and cultural crusades. Active involvement in the life of subordinated populations is no longer needed (on the contrary, such involvement appears unnecessarily costly and inefficient). *** Bauman portrays the contrast between the previous and current types of modernity through the terms “hardware” and “software” modernity. The previous phase was characterized by being obsessed with size, which symbolized power and success. It was, Bauman says (ibid., 57 58), the age of hardware: an era of bulky and heavy machinery, long factory walls enclosing ever larger factory areas to accommodate more factory personnel; the age of cumbersome railway locomotives and giant ocean liners. Heavy modernity according to Bauman trusted its project to incorporate sense and order. It was a time of drawing boards and highly detailed plans and hope that reality could be delivered by the statue of law. However, it was also a time of territorial conquest associated with the idea that wealth and power are firmly rooted or buried deep in the ground — bulky, persistent, and immobile as the The M odern World, Its For mat ive P roc ess es and T rans format ions

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strata of iron ore and coal reserves (ibid., p. 114). The idea of progress was associated with an ever-growing volume of production and wealth and spatial expansion. Territory was among the obsessions of modern times, its acquisition part of the most compulsive modern aspirations ground — meanwhile the guarding of borders became among the most ubiquitous, intense and growing of modern addictions (ibid.). All this changed with the commencement of a new software capitalism, which Bauman dubs liquid modernity (the liquid modernity). To express the character of the present epoch, Bauman considers the most appropriate metaphor to be liquidity or fluidity. This is because social and production relations have lost their solid shape and are becoming fluid, flexible, and variable. Their nature is now close to the nature offluids, which in contrast to solids cannot retain their shape; on the other hand, it is not easy to stop them as they flow around, carry away, dissolve, or permeate through obstacles in their way. Liquid modernity entails a radical release of all restrictions on individual freedom of choice and action: deregulation, liberalization, and flexibilization. Furthermore, it signals a progressive collapse of the early modern illusion that the road on which we proceed has an end, an attainable telos of historical change, that there is a state of perfection to which we will arrive in the coming years or next millennium, with some kind of fair and conflict-free society (ibid., p. 29). With this comes the abandonment of confidence in the collective abilities and attributes of humankind and human reason. What was once considered the task of the social whole is now fragmented, individualized and left to the efforts of individuals.

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The Human Individual and History

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Norbert Elias’s book, The Society of Individuals, constantly comes back to the problem that the author characterizes as a widening, hard-to-bridge gap in Western thinking between the individual and society (Elias, 2001, p. 3 ff.). There are two opposing parties: the proponents of one view rest on the assumption that “Everything depends on the individual,” while others find it more credible that “Everything depends on society.” The former argue that there are always particular individuals who decide what should and should not be done. The latter argue that what individuals do is always socially conditioned (ibid., p. 54). Such antinomies permeate all our thinking. We have an idea of what we are as human individuals and also some idea of what society is, but these two images are not a very good fit. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that individuals make up society and every society is a society of individuals (ibid., p. 6). Although we suppose that the “gap” between the individual and society does not really exist, our thinking is continually fissured by this polarity. One of the issues that Elias focused on was how to overcome this and bridge the long-standing theoretical gap which causes it.

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Individualization in the Perspective of Historical Sociological Thinking The broad perspective of historical sociology is that the relationship between human beings and society is not fixed but variable; historical and cultural formations take different forms, while human personality and its psyche are not constant but historically variable depending on the type of society and culture. Findings on this issue can be drawn not only from historical (Gurevich, 1985) and anthropological literature (van Dülmen, 1997) but also from sociological works (Kon, 1980). One of the fundamental aspects of the historical development of personality is seen to be growing individualization. The concept of individualism became significant in the 18th century in the context of British liberal thinking and its philosophy of politics (Siedentop, 2015). The idea of the individualization process was picked up in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by the classics of sociological thinking. Herbert Spencer associated individualization with progressive social differentiation; Marx emphasized historical differences in the relations of production; Max Weber pointed to the historical role of Protestantism; Ferdinand Tönnies considered the issue in his romanticizing critique of modern society; Georg Simmel gave attention to the influence of individualization brought about by the use of money; the classic formulation of the problem of individualization, however, was found in the dichotomous concept of Emile Durkheim. In The Division of Labor in Society, Durkheim observes that the simpler societies are, the more alike are individuals within them. For archaic societies with mechanical solidarity, it is characteristic that the collective consciousness dominates. The individual personality is absorbed into the collective, associated with the underdevelopment of individuality and consequently the mental, moral, and social homogeneity of individuals (Durkheim, 1964 [1893]). This confirmed unity among the people means the identification of their consciousnesses with the collective consciousness. In the evolutionary development associated with the division of labor,

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the collective consciousness loses its social strength and thus mental and moral alikeness disappears. The human personality of the past was, according to Durkheim, unfree, limited, undeveloped, and lacking in individuality, reflecting its determination by the simple form of society around it. A higher degree of organization, a greater degree of division of labor, allows the human being to become something more than just the epitome of its social group; it allows the opportunity to use and freely develop individual abilities (according to Durkheim, it is an illusion to believe that one’s personality is more complete if less affected by the division of labor; the development of personality is connected precisely with specialization; what it loses in breadth it gains through specialized association with coworkers). Further considerations on this issue came through Elias, who approaches increasing individualization as a correlate of the civilizing process. He understands individualization shifts as the consequence of a shift in the structure of human relationships. It is characteristic of individualization that the We- and- I- Balance (WirIch-Balance) is tilted from We to I (Elias, 2001, pp. 155 237). Previously, the We-identity and I-identity (Wir- und Ich-Identity) tilted toward the former, but since the Renaissance it has more and more shifted to the latter. Descartes’ famous sentence, Cogito, ergo sum, may serve in this context as an indicator of the pivot in this “balance” (ibid., pp. 197 198).1 For completeness, it must be added that classical sociologists also pay attention to the internally contradictory character of the 1. Here, however, Elias also shows the other side of these tendencies: There is no I-identity without We-identity; the problem is that of their mutual “balance.” The We-identity in fact retains its importance, which in the present time situation has acquired a new dimension — the accompanying phenomenon of the increasing complexity and interdependence of modern societies, which means that the question of humanity as a whole is increasingly coming to the forefront. The We-consciousness and the We-feelings of people for the time being cannot track this development (they still remain on the nation-state level). The existence of global problems (e.g., weapons of mass destruction) should encourage considerations on whether this lagging of the We-image behind the genuine level of integration may have dangerous consequences for humanity.

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process of individualization in modern society. Foremost in this is Marx’s theory of alienation, which revealed the tendencies of depersonalization to which people are exposed in capitalist economies and which, as was remarked in the second chapter, remains relevant to contemporary thought. Related ideas are also found not only in the works of critical theory of the Frankfurt School in the Dialectics of Enlightenment (Adorno & Horkheimer, 2008 [1944]), Negative Dialectics (Adorno, 2006 [1966]), and in the work of One-Dimensional Man (Marcuse, 1964) but also in the work of many other authors. A shift in sociological reflection on individualization occurred at the end of the 20th century, concerned with the differences between the so-called first classical industrial modernity, and second, radicalized modernity. Discussions on deepening individualization in the contemporary phase of modernizing — as was mentioned in the previous chapter — have been led by authors such as Gilles Lipovetsky (1983), Zygmunt Bauman (2001), Anthony Giddens (2000), Ulrich Beck (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2002), or Richard Sennett (1998).

Individualism and Holism The antinomies between the individual and society to which Elias referred in his work The Society of Individuals are associated with various terminological references in current theoretical literature. Jeffrey C. Alexander (1987) distinguishes between individualistic and collectivist theories. Brian Fay, in the book Contemporary Philosophy of Social Sciences, opposed the conceptual pair atomism and holism. According to atomism, each individual represents a distinct unit of social life endowed with the ability to control their own action on the basis of their beliefs and desires (Fay, 1996, pp. 30 32). Atomists understand society as a collection of individuals and at the same time consider that social units are transferable to the activities of the individuals who create them. Fay connects atomism with the strong belief in the fundamental singularity of individuals, who are considered as if what they are were

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independent of their relations to other people (ibid., pp. 32 33). Thomas Hobbes is considered as the philosophical founder of atomism in the 17th century, while in 20th-century social sciences this position is strongly represented by Friedrich von Hayek, who argues that social phenomena cannot be understood other than through understanding individual acts. In sociology, the origins of such methodological individualism are associated with Max Weber. The opposite of atomism is holism, “according to which the properties of individuals are solely a function of their place in society or some broad system of meanings” (ibid., pp. 50 53). It is always necessary to take social units as the basis of social theory, not their individual members. Holism does not allow for theories of social units to be reduced or transferred to theories of individuals. For the social sciences, the key personality of holism is Émile Durkheim; Fay considers the modern version of holism to include structuralism in particular (Lévi-Strauss, Foucault, and others). The opposition that Fay describes can be expressed in the form of related dualisms. Derek Layder mentions three of these in his book Understanding Social Theory (1994, p. 3): individual social, micro macro, and action structure. The distinction individual social, which he considers to be the oldest and most persistent dilemma of sociological thought, corresponds in principle with the opposition atomism holism, addressed by Fay. Layder points out that the problem of this dualism lies in the fact that individuals cannot be placed in sharp opposition to society simply because many of the needs and motivations that influence human individuals are produced by the social environment in which they live. Put simply, there is no society without individuals — who help define it — and at the same time there are no individuals beyond the influence of society (ibid.). The individualistic (atomistic) interpretation presumes that in all social actions the individual is the starting point, often referred to as the (individual) actor and their action. Individualistic opinion assumes that all social phenomena consist of many different, interrelated, and interconnected actions of individuals, and moreover that these — often complex — phenomena can be retrospectively The Hum an Individual and His tory

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attributed to the actions of individual actors. The principles of individualistic sociology were formulated by Max Weber. For Weber, Sociology is the science of social action. In his 1913 essay, “Über einige Kategorien der verstehenden Soziologie” he notes that the subject of sociology is the social action of individuals and its aim is to understand and explain the course of this action through the meaning that the acting individuals themselves attributed to it (Weber, 1988 [1922], pp. 432 438). In his later work Basic Sociological Terms, Weber characterizes sociology as a science to understand social action and causally explain its course and its effects (Weber, 1972, pp. 1 30). A key element in this concept is the German term Verstehen — understanding — from which is derived the designation of Weber’s sociology as die verstehende Soziologie — understanding sociology. In terms of Weber’s sociology all social phenomena, formations, and the entire social order are a human creation which consist of social relationships between acting individuals that pursue their own goals and value orientations; they are series, or complexes, of the interconnected actions of human individuals. Generally speaking, individualistic opinion attributes primacy to the subjective, sovereign, individual free will, applied in the actions of human individuals. The individualistic perspective brings a “view from below” that sees the individual as an actor who creates social reality with activities on the basis of how they understand the world affairs around them, how they interpret such affairs, and what meaning or significance they attribute to the actions. Society, social institutions, structures and systems, are something built (if need be constructed) from below, as a result of the interconnected actions of individuals, and thus the result of interpersonal interactions. Holism on the other hand is based on the philosophical assumption that the whole is more than the collection of its component parts. Therefore, social reality cannot be explained by reference to individuals and their individual actions, but must be explained on the basis of its own principles. Émile Durkheim claims that the subjects of sociology are so-called social facts, which are supraindividual, external to the individual, and enter consciousness as

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something external, independent of the will. The second essential characteristic is that they have coercive power and are able to exercise social pressure for the individual to conform to (Durkheim, 1966 [1895], p. 1 ff.). However, examples of social facts for Durkheim consisted of such broad phenomena as religion, language, law, or morality. In the book The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, he says: we speak a language which we have not ourselves created, use tools which we have not ourselves invented, and claim rights which we have not ourselves established. Each successive generation inherits a sum of knowledge which did not collect itself and which it owes to society. The environment in which we live seems to us to be populated by forces that control us, but are also helpful to us. And these forces influence us by pressure which we conform to (Durkheim, 1968 [1912], p. 212). Durkheim sees society as a reality of a special kind which cannot be simply identified with the sum of its individual parts, because it has its own specific qualities that cannot be transferred to individuals. In relation to the individual, it is the social or collective which determines society and which the individual submits to. Society has primacy over the individual in that it existed long before the individual and will be there long afterward. It is a whole that has the ability to force individuals to live and act in a certain way. In the holistic perspective, individual actions are not seen as a result of the sovereign decision of the individual, but as a consequence of social (functional) pressures that society imposes on human individuals and which they obey. The history of the sociology of the 20th century shows that both lines of explanation — individualistic and holistic — presented viable exploratory strategies that found outlets in a series of sociological schools and specializations. Through the individualistic approach, we can encounter utilitarian theories based on the concept of not only homo oeconomicus (exchange theory, rational choice theory) but also interpretive sociology (in particular, phenomenological sociology). From holism on the other hand arose first and foremost structuralism, then functionalism and systems theory. However, alongside this several exploratory approaches emerged The Hum an Individual and His tory

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which viewed both these tendencies as one-sided and limited, and which attempted to overcome them by bridging or linking them. In the framework of this movement, we can include the contribution of Norbert Elias to sociological theory. Elias seeks quite systematically to overcome the contradiction between Weberian and Durkheimian sociology. Both attitudes, according to Elias, are based on the same mistake — an artificial, analytical separation of the individual and society which emphasizes divergent perspectives. Our thinking moves between the two extremes which permeate sociological theory; the first understands the individual as being outside the society, and the second society as existing in opposition to the individual. The problem of the relationship between the individual and society is, according to Elias, unresolved in sociology. Both individualism and holism tend to take their starting points (in the one case the personality of the individual, in the other, the objectivity of supra-individual social reality) as something distinctive which has a privileged position, both in the ontological and epistemological senses. Both interpretative lines at the same time face certain problems, limits, and restrictions; in both cases there is a danger of reductionism and simplification. Individualism is strong in the interpretation of phenomena taking place at the microsocial level, but has trouble capturing what goes beyond the level of individuals and their interpersonal relationships. It lacks theoretical tools for the explanation of such macrosocial phenomena as culture, civilization, modernization, industrialism, globalization, or the social functioning of societal subsystems. In other words, individualistic thinking has a problem with grasping what goes beyond the level of interaction. Representatives of individualism are commonly unwilling to admit that some processes are systemic in nature, that is, their driving force is the system itself and its structures, and that some processes launch a systemic logic independent of the will of individuals. Even if they acknowledge individualism — in terms of the individual’s voluntarism and free will — holistic approaches tend to credit supra-individual influences, pressures, and systemic

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processes independent of the will of individuals. Behind everything, Holism sees specific manifestations of supra-individual entities or the functioning of social structures, systems, or subsystems which individuals submit to. The exclusion of individuals from the perspective of theoretical thinking leads holism to attribute vital functions to social wholes — which means systems. Supporters of holism tend to consider the macro level of social reality and ignore subjectivity and individual initiative, emphasizing conformity and subordination. Elias subjected both tendencies to criticism, considering that neither leads to an adequate understanding of society. One recognizes it only as an aggregate of individuals, the other as something that exists outside individuals (Elias, 2001, p. vii). Supporters of individualism tend to latch on to the atoms, the smallest particles of society. Individuals represent a kind of firm “post,” between which stretch the temporary strings of interpersonal relationships. For those who are used to thinking in an individualistic way, it is difficult to understand that social relationships may have their own structure and natural development. Elias emphasizes instead that each individual human being lives nestled into a network (entanglement) of interpersonal relations, in which a number of features are dependent on others, and others are dependent on them (ibid., p. 11 ff.). These relationships are at least partially reflected in personal character. The structure of these relationships varies in different societies and no individual, whatever their personal qualities and dispositions, can break out of period-given facts and social frameworks, or transform them while subject to them. Moreover, each society has its own history that none of the individuals who jointly formed it anticipated or intended. Elias, however, went on in his considerations to wonder how it could happen that the coexistence and interaction of many human individuals might lead to the creation of something new, which no one ever strived for and nobody planned. In holism, according to Elias, its devotees usually proceed from a biological way of thinking. They imagine society only as a supraindividual organic substance that exists beyond individuals. As a The Hum an Individual and His tory

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holder of social principles it is labelled the “collective spirit,” the “collective organism,” or — in analogy with the forces of nature — supra-individual spiritual or material “forces.” In this way of thinking there is no place for individuals. According to Elias, neither tendency adequately grasps what is going on in social reality, and consequently there opens an unbridgeable gap between social and individual phenomena. If we want to understand them correctly, we need to change our way of thinking to abandon thinking focused on separate substances and move on to thinking focused on relationships and functions. The structures of the human psyche, human society, and human history do not exist separately, as it appears they do in today’s research. On the contrary, they are inseparable, complementary phenomena that can be explored only in their mutual relations (ibid., pp. 20 40). During the 20th century, there were other theorists who attempted to overcome the antinomy of individualism and holism. First there was Talcott Parsons, who, in his work The Structure of Social Action, tried to interconnect the ideas of Weber and Durkheim (Parsons, 1966). Later, there were Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966), Jürgen Habermas (1981), Pierre Bourdieu (1998), Anthony Giddens (1984), Roy Bhaskar (1978), Margaret Archer (1995), Bruno Latour (2005), Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thevenot (2007), and many others. In principle, it is possible to distinguish in this effort two basic strategies. The first is based on postulating some “third” that is placed as a bolt between the individual and society to connect these contrary poles. The second is led by the effort to bring together the individual and collective and put them into a single explanatory framework, so that they are alternated in the explanation of social events. The origins of the first strategy can be traced back to Georg Simmel, whose conception of sociology can be seen as a response to the dispute between sociological nominalism and realism (Keller, 2004, p. 357). Extreme nominalism is the claim that only human individuals really exist, not society. Realism — on the contrary — not only ascribes objective existence to society and other social wholes, but in addition has a tendency to put society above

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the individual. Simmel’s definition of sociology tries to take a specific position that avoids the extremes. Simmel stands apart from nominalism, emphasizing the primacy of sociability over individuality, and moreover asserts that the result of interactions between individuals is specific social qualities not original to the acting persons. However, at the same time he distances himself from realism, from the substantialist concept of social reality, and emphasizes character. Society, according to Simmel, does not exist as a substance, but always as a two-way interaction between individuals (Simmel, 1970, p. 27). Simmel believes that society exists only because it is moment by moment re-created by the actions of people and their mutual interaction, in which various forms of interpersonal association are lastingly formed, reproduced, but also scratched out. Simmel highlights this interaction as the missing “third” and the most important social phenomenon, which he calls Wechselwirkung — meaning interaction A typical example of the second approach is Anthony Giddens and his theory of structuration, in which the individual pole is represented by the term action, and the social pole by the expression structure (Giddens, 1984). Giddens’s theory is based on a dual theorem of action and structure, which states that structures are the product of human action, but, once formed, structures represent a tool for other human actions; a tool which on the one hand allows such action, but on the other, directs and limits it. Giddens — simply put — throughout his theoretical interpretation shifts his standpoint to explain observed issues by alternating individualistic and holistic positions. Essentially he says: the first step is to adopt an individualistic position because it is individuals whose actions create structures; however, the second step is to adopt a holistic perspective, as these already-formed structures affect subsequent individual actions. The third step is to return to the individualistic point of view as individuals by their actions enable the existing structures not only to reproduce but to modify and transform. Strategies in this field are not so different from each other; in fact they are complementary and have various points of overlap. Elias’ solution to the question of relations between individual and The Hum an Individual and His tory

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society is close to Simmel’s. He tried to overcome the extremes of individualism and holism — the two poles of social science — and to unify them through the concept of figuration, which he focused on especially not only in the book What is Sociology? (Elias, 2012 [1978]) but also in his other works (e.g., The Court Society, Elias, 1983, The Established and the Outsiders, Elias & Scotson, 1965). The concept of figuration is among his theoretical innovations. Figuration is, for instance, family, school class, rural community, or state. At first glance, it might seem that this term is close to what is commonly referred to in sociology as a social group, but this is not the case. The concept of figuration draws attention to the interdependence of people, which means to what mutually connects them. It is a concept that can be related both to relatively small groups, and to big societies. Elias introduced the concept to express more clearly and unambiguously that what we call society is neither an abstraction of the characteristics of existing individuals without society, nor the “system” or “the whole” excluding individuals, but rather a tangle of interdependencies created by individuals (Elias, 1994 [1939]). Fairly transparent examples of figurations may be teacher and pupil in the classroom, doctor and patient in the therapeutic group, and regulars in the pub. More complex figurations are for example the residents of a village, city, or nation. Chains of dependencies that bind such people together are not directly perceptible; they are diffuse. The features of such complex figurations can be understood in more detail through analysis of interdependency chains. To illustrate the concept of figuration, Elias used the example of social dances (Elias, 2001, pp. 19 20), because he believed that the real picture of moving figurations of interdependent people dancing can help us to understand figurations such as family, city, state, or social formation. Let us imagine as a symbol of society a group of dancers performing court dances, such as the française or quadrille, or a country round dance. The steps and bows, gestures and movements made by the individual dancer are all entirely meshed and synchronized with those of other dancers. If any of the dancing individuals were contemplated in isolation, the

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functions of his or her movements could not be understood. The way the individual behaves in this situation is determined by the relations of the dancers to each other. The expressions and movements of individuals may in one way or another be individually-colored, but they are always focused on others. We can of course talk about dance and its rules in general, but we can hardly imagine it as something completely outside human individuals. Like other social figuration, this figuration is relatively independent of specific individuals, but in general cannot do without individuals. Another analogy for figurations is games (Elias, 1992a). If four people play cards, they form a figuration, their actions are interdependent. Although it is possible to talk about the game as something autonomous (and say e.g., “the game is going slowly”), it is essential, however, that the course of the game arises from the mutual entanglement of the four individuals involved. Figuration in this case means the “changing pattern” that players as a whole mutually make with their actions, engaged not only with their intellect but also with their whole personality. This figuration is formed by a structure of interdependent tension, in which participating individuals can stand as allies and also opponents to one another. The structural features of figuration therefore include the “fluctuating balance of power” (ibid.), which is at least bipolar, but mostly multipolar, and constitutes an integral element of all human relationships. People and figurations are changing, and though these changes are inseparable and interdependent they are on different levels and of different kinds. In contemporary, abundantly differentiated society, the actions of individuals interweave to form long chains of functional relationships. Each human individual is involved in many such chains; through the functions they perform they are dependent on many other individuals and vice versa. Instead of the idea of the human being as something closed (homo clausus), Elias emphasizes the image of man as an “open personality,” in relation to other people more or less autonomous, never absolutely and totally autonomous, because each through their life is grounded, oriented and dependent on others. The chains of these The Hum an Individual and His tory

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dependencies — not as visible and tangible as iron chains — are strong enough, but also elastic and changeable, and their arrangement is expressed by the term social structures. In their framework, there is a — greater or lesser — space for individual decision making; there appear crossroads where people must make up their minds, and choices on which may depend the fate not only of themselves but of others. Elias’s sociology of figuration was widely discussed in the 1980s, when it was considered very promising, and hopes were placed in it. Today, with hindsight, we can say that these expectations were not fully met. One of the problems lies in the fact that Elias defined the concept of figuration very generally and roughly; he did not work it up in enough detail to be a fully understandable and unequivocally applicable research tool in the field of theory and research. Although today there is a considerable amount of special literature that uses the term figuration (e.g., Gabriel & Mennell, 2011), those who use it often have to specify what they mean by it. What is missing in particular in Elias is the resolution of the various structural levels at which the creation of figurations occurs, and specifics on the differences between these individual levels, because there is after all a difference between the figurations made by whist players, mazurka dancers, or the citizens of a modern state.

Homo Sociologicus Sociological thought approaches the topic of the human individual quite broadly, ranging from attempts to develop the “sociology of personality” (Kon, 1971; Spitzer, 1969) to tendencies to eliminate the individual from reflection on social structures and systems — the position of theoretical or methodological “anti-humanism” (Althusser et al., 1970; Luhmann, 1984). Ralf Dahrendorf — in his book Homo Sociologicus — said that there is a simplified notion of the human individual in the foundations of sociological thinking, in which he/she is considered as unilaterally determined by social forces. Dahrendorf asserts that at the very core of sociological

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thought is a simplified idea of human nature where the human individual is seen merely as subject to social forces and unilaterally subordinate to the social order. To convey this idea, Dahrendorf coined the term “homo sociologicus,” and in the context of his era he related it to the conception of social role. The central topic of Dahrendorf’s book is the theory of social roles and the consequences of its acceptance for the sociological insight on humanity. The textbook definition of social role is that formulated by Ralph Linton (1936, Linton, 1964, pp. 113 114), as a set of “expectations” related to individual behavior which occupies a certain “status” (position) in society. Expectations defines not only role but also status. Status is defined by what a person in a certain position in society can expect from others, who in return can themselves lay claims and demands. Let us add that the term expectation has a significant connection to the problems of structures, understood as principles and rules arranging social reality. As an anthropologist, Linton was especially interested in communities where these expectations and therefore also structures, had not yet acquired codified form; by contrast in contemporary societies many roles, especially in a variety of organizational systems, are defined by organizational regulations, norms, and sometimes even laws. An important position in considerations on social roles had George Herbert Mead (1977, pp. 209 246) and his theory of the human “Self” as uniting two components, “I” and “Me.” “I” is an individual, subjective component that is active and creative. “Me” is an objective, passive component, which is based primarily on the internal attitudes of a social group or society to which the individual belongs. In Mead’s concept, which became part of the theory of symbolic interactionism, and later even of constructivism (Berger & Luckmann, 1966), the learning of social roles is part of the socialization process. Psychologist and psychiatrist Jacob Levy Moreno contributed to the popularity of the concept of role in human sciences, despite not being interested primarily in the sociological aspects of social roles, as his main theme was spontaneous role-playing as a The Hum an Individual and His tory

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therapeutic tool within psychodrama, that is, a method of group therapy inspired by theatrical improvisation (his first major work on this topic was published in 1946, Moreno, 1977). In sociology, Erving Goffman has been associated with the adjective “dramaturgical,” because in the theatre, as in society, according to Goffman we meet individuals who show off to other people to make an impression. In his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959, Goffman, 1973 [1959]), the author focuses on dramaturgical aspects in the behavior of actors, using such concepts as “performance,” “role,” “dramatization,” “staging,” “stage set,” and “backstage.” Later the relationship between theatrical environment and social realities was addressed by other authors (see e.g., Eisermann, 1991, pp. 19 40; Langer, 1980). What is not usually pointed out in the textbook interpretation of the issue of roles is that a developed concept of roles can be found in a joint book by Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills, Character and Social Structure published as early as 1953 (Gerth & Mills, 1970). Their approach is committed to social psychology and combines influences from Marx, Weber, Freud, and Mead. However, American sociology at that time was dominated by the structural functionalist concept, which enriched reflections on roles with a macrosociological view. Looking at this functionalist perspective, we could say that while the term function is used to express the specific contribution of different social components (organizations and subsystems) to maintaining society as a whole, the concept of role expresses how human individuals contribute to the same task. The concept of role is actually a kind of bridge between the human individual and social functions. Or — more radically — “through roles the social system empowers individuals and their activities and uses them for its effective functioning” (Urbánek, 1979, p. 104). This perspective is found in Kingsley Davis and Wilbert Moore, who from functionalist positions explain why we see social inequality everywhere (Davies & Moore, 1945). Society, to reproduce, must ensure the implementation of certain necessary functions. Securing this task is the responsibility of individuals, operating respectively through organizations and subsystems to perform the social roles

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endorsed by them. According to Davis and Moore, in order for society to ensure that the most important social functions are carried out by the most qualified individuals, an unequal system of remuneration exists where those who perform the most important tasks receive the highest payments. Setting aside the numerous polemical voices righteously raised against this conclusion, we can say that the functionalist approach draws attention to issues of social distribution and the allocation of roles. Functionalist interpretative models are associated with the evolutionary concept of functional differentiation, which analyzes how social entities, institutions, and the social role differentiate on the principle of division of labor toward ever greater complexity and higher specialization. Alongside this, they deal with how functionally differentiated complex units reproduce over time, what holds them together, and also what leads to their disintegration, or even to pathological phenomena. Of great importance in this context are the concepts of dysfunction and anomie elaborated by Robert K. Merton (1957 [1949]). In Lundberg, Schrag, and Larsen (1958), we can see that the concept of roles is associated with dysfunction and anomic phenomena, an insight used especially by criminology analyzing patterns of behavior exhibited by thieves, fraudsters, or prostitutes. Merton contributed further to thinking in the topic with the concept of “role-set,” a term interpreted variously by textbooks. Merton contributed to this by saying that each status in society is bound up with multiple roles (Merton, 1957 [1949], p. 368 ff.). Merton identifies complementary role relationships attained by a person occupying a certain social position. Essentially, different people in different positions expect from one and the same role different things. A professional role may be played differently for senior executives than for subordinates, and in a different way to the public. One and the same role is thus associated with a range of expected manifestations of behavior that may sometimes diverge significantly. Today, in sociological literature we also come across the term “repertoire.” It was Talcott Parsons, for whom the concept of role was one of the main categories of social structure, who applied the The Hum an Individual and His tory

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structuralist perspective, understanding structure as a network of relationships between actors of interactive processes that established formulas of relationships between acting persons (Parsons, 1968, p. 54). This network is formed by roles, institutionalized norms, and values. Roles represent essential structural units; in work The Social System Parsons speaks about the system of differentiated roles as a structure in the narrower sense (Parsons, 1967 [1951], p. 114). Sets of roles are created by institutions that are higher-order structural units. Institutions represent complementary sets of regulations, therefore norms and roles that are important for the operation of a given system and as such are required and expected by individual actors. Part of structure is also allocation, that is, the allocation of limited supplies among structural units. As roles (especially some of them) are critical, the first aspect of allocation is the issue of occupation of roles, the division of people into roles. Another aspect of allocation is the distribution of facilities and rewards. At the heart of Parsons’ analysis is the imperative of consensus, that is, functional integration and the stability of the social system, which are ensured by the compliance of the behavior of individual actors with established patterns of behavior (role-expectations) and value orientations. Achieving equilibrium and stability in social systems is ensured by built-in mechanisms of adaptation and control. Parsons emphasizes the conformity of individuals to roles and the social system, and along with this emphasizes the need to eliminate deviant phenomena and conflicts from society. If Parsons was a key representative of consensus theory in sociology in the 1950s and 1960s, one of the most important representatives of the opposing group, represented by theories of conflict, was the German sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf. Among other things, he created a typology of social conflicts, with one type taking place at the level of social roles (Dahrendorf, 1963b, p. 206). The list of possible types of conflicts associated with social roles became a standard part of various textbooks, so we touch this topic only briefly. The most commonly reported cases include the following:

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A conflict of roles stemming from the fact that every individual plays not just one but several roles. These diverse roles can place significant demands in terms of time and performance, but may also be associated with conflicting expectations (Dahrendorf, 1964, p. 59). Conflicts can also arise from inconsistent expectations which bind to a particular role in at least two cases. In the first, contradictory expectations come from various actors who play differing complementary roles (e.g., the requirements of senior executives against the ideas of subordinates, Lundberg et al., 1958, p. 161 ff.). In the second, mutually incompatible and inconsistent expectations come from one actor in a particular role (e.g., when a lover expects from his counterpart that she will be both lecherous and chaste). Finally, conflicts can concern the relationship between the role and the personality of the respective actor, arising from the fact that the role attributed to the individual does not suit them for some reason, or is even against their conscience (see e.g., Dreitzel, 1980; Junker, 1971). The reasons for this may be mainly psychological (the individual does not feel adequately equipped for the performance of the role) or ethical (the role is unacceptable to them). Social roles are often associated with the distribution of power, with the ability to force someone to play some kind of role, place them into a subordinate position, and conversely to benefit from superior positions. The relationship of role and power has become a subject of specialized studies (Claessens, 1970, SchulteAltedorneburg, 1977; Wiswede, 1977, pp. 57 77) which usually focus on three interrelated themes: Sanctions. The system of roles is accompanied by penal sanctions that are among the mechanisms of social control. These affect those who do not meet expectations; thus demonstrating the power that society has over actors of roles, whereby it judges appropriate individual role performance. The Hum an Individual and His tory

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Hierarchy. The differentiation of roles is related to a stratification hierarchy and thus to social inequality in which the holders of different roles are caught in power relations of superiority and inferiority. Power conflicts. Some roles are in short supply and are not available to all those who would wish to play them. Occupying roles then become the subject of power conflicts, disputes over the legitimacy of relevant structures and even violent conflicts. Social roles are something an individual human being may identify with (in particular, if one plays a role that one likes it satisfies and fulfils ambitions); on the other hand, they can be unsuited to the individual, who then tries to keep some distance from their role. Goffman’s concept of “distance from the role” (Goffman, 1961, pp. 106 109; Jean-Pierre Junker, 1971, pp. 21 30; Urbanek, 1979, pp. 118 125) is not rejection of role, but behavior by which an individual indicates that their personality and identity are not reducible to the particular role they play or even have to play. Goffman understands such distance as often the only way to maintain dignity in conditions where we are forced to play a certain role by necessity. The German sociologist Uta Gerhardt understands the concept of role as typification and places it alongside Schütz’s phenomenological sociology (Gerhardt, 1971, pp. 155 166). Typification is essentially certain areas or typical manifestations of human behavior. Role in this context (e.g., the role of shop assistant, conductor, teacher, or clerk) can therefore be defined as a specific social type and typical behavior associated with it. A significant typifying tool is language, which allows users to incorporate into personal experience things and events which they will never encounter. Typifying schemes make orientation in the everyday world easier, but they may be burdened with simplifications, prejudices, and stereotypes. Names of typical roles then become a kind of “label” describing not just institutional, but deviant behavior. Lundberg et al. (1958) in this context mention that giving such labels may

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lead eventually even to actions according to expectations, that is, in consequence of them. American sociologist Anselm L. Strauss was the author of Mirrors and Masks: The Search for Identity, in which he raised the question of why people put on “masks” (Strauss, 1997 [1959]). A mask can cover the true face of the person, it can be a disguise, but it may also conceal and protect. The notion of the mask made it possible to look at role as something behind which the individual hides their true face and identity. The Czech sociologist Eduard Urbanek (1979, pp. 94 96) in Masks, Roles, Characters shows that this may also become an excuse through which people get rid of personal responsibility for how they have behaved or are behaving. Examples are the minions of criminal systems or dictatorships, which show that many people who served them do not want to admit personal guilt for what they did, and pass on all responsibility to higher social interests, official duties, and superiors, claiming that they only fulfilled their orders. In other words, the responsibility for their deeds is transferred to those institutions that laid down the rules for their roles. In this we may see — on the micro level — echoes of the work of Hana Arendt and her work on Eichmann and the Banality of Evil, and — on the macro level — Bauman with Modernity and the Holocaust. A special position in discussions on the issue of roles is occupied, as previously mentioned, by Ralf Dahrendorf’s Homo sociologicus. Dahrendorf published this in a journal in 1958 in Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Socialpsychologie (Vol. 10., No. 2, 3), and later in the form of a book (Dahrendorf, 1964). Subsequently, this has appeared in several editions, been translated into many languages, and is still read and commented on (e.g., Kneidinger, 2013; Nixdorf, 2011). The core of the problem which Dahrendorf points to is that human individuals for most of their lives play social roles associated with social determination, constraint, and pressure to conformity. If they play these roles in the required manner, as is expected of them, they are accepted and rewarded. On the other hand, when they do not fulfil these expectations, they are punished, excluded, and subject to even criminal sanctions The Hum an Individual and His tory

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(Dahrendorf, 1964, p. 28 ff.). Dahrendorf asks the question of where in such a world there is a place for human freedom, autonomy and creativity. But he leaves this question unanswered. A positive answer to Dahrendorf’s question was offered by American sociologist Peter L. Berger in his work Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective. Berger admits that the world of social roles evokes a kind of big prison in which human behavior is hampered by socially mandatory roles, whose observance is bound up with all sorts of mechanisms of social control. Berger adds that in this world we are trapped in our own efforts (Berger, 1963, p. 121). The fact that we play a role is mostly not realized, as it is approached automatically as though to something obvious. Often it may not even be forced, because we accept it willingly, even with enthusiasm, as it advantageous to do so (Urbanek, 1979, p. 114). Having stated that the world of roles resembles a prison, Berger pivots with the claim that human individuals can demonstrate their freedom, not outside such a world, but paradoxically only in it. The compelling forces of society are not omnipotent, and human individuals are not powerless against them. According to Berger (1963, p. 129 ff.), human individuals can demonstrate their freedom by manipulating their roles or even transforming them (i.e., modifying their content and associated expectations); they can also — as shown by E. Goffman — hold themselves at a distance from, and ultimately even refuse to play, certain roles, though this can have the gravest consequences. In Berger’s approach, freedom is understood primarily as the opportunity for personal choice and innovative action within the world of roles. One can of course not only theoretically speculate on this but also empirically observe. Louis A. Zucher (1983) for instanced tried to research the procedures through which people familiarize themselves with their role and affect its content (assimilation, modification, transformation, and dealing with unacceptable roles). From Berger’s considerations, one can conclude that the problem highlighted by Dahrendorf is actually somewhat artificially constructed, in the sense that he deliberately emphasized and

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absolutized one aspect, namely, that the role affects the individual through pressure. What is not sufficiently discussed, therefore, is that this pressure is not omnipotent and that within the rules and requirements of the role and role playing there is “space” which allows for the individual as a free human being. Man is not a simple machine or automaton playing roles like a gramophone record on the record-player; much more is going on than just role regulation translated into practice. The concept of “playing a social role” reflects much richer content. Role playing does not depend only on expectations but also on the seriousness of those expectations, on the personality of the actor, its opponents and the situational context. In the course of playing a specific social role in most cases the actor must interconnect and “balance out” a number of conditions and influences, many of which greatly exceed the role’s definition. *** Even though the concept of social role is encountered in sociological literature today, discussion of it largely ceased during the 1970s (Griese, Nikles, & Rülcker, 1977; Haug, 1972, Jackson, 1972, Joas, 1973; Wiswede, 1977; Biddle, 1979), as it was sidelined by other approaches and topics. This was not merely an undulation in the waves of sociological fashion, but reflected something deeper, namely the rejection of holistic, structurally-functionalist ideas about the human individual as a more or less passive and conformist performer of structural requirements and functional imperatives, with a swing toward the concept of the human actor as an autonomous, separate, and independent being who decides and acts on the basis of knowledge, preferences, and rationality, who follows interests, aims, and objectives. The image of man in sociology — what Dahrendorf called homo sociologicus — began taking a different form and the socially determined and controlled performer of roles was replaced by the notion of a sovereign, independently thinking and acting actor, gifted with will, knowledge and creativity. Anthony Giddens, who in the 1970s and 1980s criticized what he described as the “orthodox consensus” in Parsons’ work, expressed the opinion that social theory must deal primarily with the issue of human actors. The way Giddens talks about human The Hum an Individual and His tory

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beings in his theory of structuration follows the idea of a competent, knowing, and self-confident actor (Giddens’ “agent”), who is an active and relatively autonomous, qualified, and competent executor of social activities. This is a human being of reflection and self-reflection and the capacity to understand what they do while doing it (Giddens, 1984, pp. xxii xxiii). A different approach is taken by rational choice theory, associated with the notion of an individual who expresses individual preferences and rationally decides to minimize costs and maximize profits. The behavior of individuals in this case is associated with rationality via economic and mathematical methods. It mainly featured in the interdisciplinary approach in American sociology through James S. Coleman (1994), in France through Raymond Boudon (in 1980), and in Germany through Hartmut Esser (1993). Pierre Bourdieu’s elaboration of this has gained and retained great popularity to the present day. According to Bourdieu, social agents are equipped with systematically structured dispositions constitutive for their practice and their thinking about this practice. This set of dispositions (inclinations) to seeing, thinking, and behaving in society Bourdieu describes as habitus. Habitus are schemes of perception, thought, and action, common to all members of the same group or class (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 99 ff.). The interest of expert audiences was also triggered by Bruno Latour (1996), who in his Actor-Network Theory (ANT) shows that networks of interactions in which human agents are involved can activate not only the people themselves but also certain factual objects. Another very hotly discussed topic has been the question of personal identity, in which narrative approaches have been advanced based on the assumption that a major formative factor of identity is the way people become the subject of their own stories (Ricoeur, 1991). Nor too should the theory of the creative action by Hans Joas (1992) be left out, as it addresses the human creative abilities that allow human agents to create and change social reality, or the theory of performativity of Jeffrey Alexander (2006), which — inspired by the theatre — puts emphasis on the publicly staged negotiation while distancing itself from the previous theory

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of social roles. Finally, one cannot overlook the fact that human emotions have become the subject of sociological research in recent decades (Turner & Stets, 2005), or that ambitious demands on the interpretation of human behavior have stimulated disciplines outside sociology, building on a natural-scientific base, such as ethology, socio-biology, and evolutionary psychology. The theme of roles has been overshadowed by other issues, and the question is whether it is worth coming back to it, and if so on what basis. This consideration reawakens the aforementioned question of overcoming the contradiction of individualism and holism, to move the poles as close as possible to each other and interconnect them in a convincing way, thus bridging the chasm between these two directions of sociological thinking. First of all we must distinguish the concept of “social role” from what can be described as “playing a social role.” As already mentioned, the concept of role playing is broader and more complex than the social role itself. Role playing is connected and depends on a number of factors, which include the way in which the individual has mastered the appropriate role, the personal qualities and abilities that they are able to devote to it; their own (selfcentred) interests achieved through playing; the way their teammates react and play their roles and finally also the situation in which behavior in the role occurs. Role playing thus significantly exceeds the set of rules, regulations, and standards that characterize the role itself. The actor of a social role faces a number of different requirements and expectations and must try by performance bring them into correspondence. We can therefore conclude that “social role playing” reflects the sought-after “third” element to interconnect the individual and society and together with it behavior and structure. At the same time, it is the element that brings the poles of theoretical thinking toward each other to the maximum extent, because in playing the role we see both — both one’s individuality and the interests of a community. Role playing is what aligns individual goals, wishes, and preferences with societal demands, structural pressures, and functional imperatives. Role playing figuratively expresses a “transmission” between the poles of theoretical thinking — the The Hum an Individual and His tory

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individual and society. It seems that the sociological theme of roles contains a potential that remains untapped, and thus merits our attention.

The Human Individual and Its Place in History Although in his sociology of figurations Norbert Elias constantly emphasizes the participation of individuals in the creation of social reality, he tends to view these individuals as typical (average) representatives of certain social groups, classes, or masses of human beings who represent a certain, historically formed type of collective human psyche, and so habitus. What we rarely find in Elias is reflection on the role of real human individuals, even though he rejects the idea that all people are of equal importance to the course of history. Elias argues that individual beings cannot be understood as passive vehicles of the social machine, and stresses that their individual character along with personal decisions may have a significant influence on the course of historical events, but he also adds that the decision-making process of individuals is always limited, variable, and dependent on the instruments of power under their control. Current sociological thinking typically only acknowledges individual influence on the microsocial level, where the approaches of social constructivism are often explored. However, a generally neglected question remains whether, and how, actors can influence the macrosocial level. This is highlighted by Nicos Mouzelis, who states that the problem cannot be successfully tackled if we do not take sufficiently into account that society is organized hierarchically, and ask what role is played within the hierarchy by socalled “macro-actors” (Mouzelis, 2006, p. 20). One of the problems to which contemporary sociological theory has no answer, and even feels no urgency over, is the question of how individuals can influence macro-level societal structures and processes. While the question of actors as creators of social reality is accorded an important place in contemporary sociology, it is usual that attention is focused only on small anonymous actors

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and their everyday activities, observed on the microsocial level. It appears that when sociology has to deal with phenomena on a macrosocial level, it is not able in principle to think other than through functionalism. Although the issue of individuals with society-wide influence is quite common and legitimate in historical science, sociology, by contrast — one might say “on principle” — ignores it. With some simplification, we can say that, for many years, we have witnessed that while history tends to see social processes as the work of famous historical figures, sociology, on the contrary, tends to be looking at these processes as a manifestation of supra-individual social units, structures and powers, or social systems and their functions. Apart from contemporary orientations of historical research toward social history or the history of everyday life, we can say that for traditionally-conceived history the past is mainly a concatenation of the acts of important individuals. Sociology, meanwhile, even contemporary sociology, sees processes of social change taking place at the level of culture, civilization, and various forms of human coexistence or social formation. In other words, in historical science the individualistic approach is significantly gaining ground, whereas in historical sociology the holistic approach is ever more dominant. It is clear that a number of topics, particularly in the development of culture, civilization, or modernity, can be monitored adequately from a holistic perspective, but doing so may ignore the role played by historical figures. There are, however, research matters where the influence of these figures cannot be ignored. One such is the issue of European development after World War II. To explain this historical stage just as the movement of anonymous masses, or the dynamics of general principles and tendencies, and ignore those who were the leaders and the “architects” of social transformations, would be inadequate. The individual element always plays a certain role in society, giving social development and social coexistence their specific features. As a result, new, unexpected phenomena turn up in social reality, and thus it is so difficult to predict social development. However, sociology lacks The Hum an Individual and His tory

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adequate theoretical and methodological instrumentation to understand the relevance of these individual “macro-actors.” The conceptual apparatus which sociology does have at its disposal originated in the founders of sociological thinking. Max Weber developed the concept of three ideal types of dominance (charismatic, traditional, and rational-legal) (Weber, 1988 [1922]), Vilfredo Pareto (1968) formulated the theory of elites, and Robert Michels (1911) focused his attention on party leaders. Not only these older but also more recent approaches usually focus on the individual at the top of social hierarchies identified as particular social groups or types, who had an effect on social characteristics which from a sociological point of view may be considered essential, decisive, and differentiating. However, what is mostly absent is an explanation of the mechanisms that enable these individuals’ actions to be reflected in the formation of social structures. Elias’s analysis of the “royal mechanism,” which the author gives in the second part of the work The Civilizing Process, is an exception to this. Elias shows that in court society, in which individuals meshed into networks of interdependencies, sovereign power was based on pitting potential opponents against each other, who thus became worn out and incapable of turning against the ruler. The absolute monarch accordingly divided opportunities, goods, and clerical functions, determined to preserve the balance of power according to the principle of “divide and rule,” which Elias dubs the “royal mechanism” (Elias, 1994 [1939], pp. 390 421). The issue of how a particular individual can affect his society and era is the topic of Elias’ last work, a small book about Mozart (Elias, 1991). In this, he focuses attention on the issue of brilliant talent in the history of art, in the process attempting to avoid two commonly encountered extremes. One is to approach the history of art as a succession of great personalities; the second, its reduction to the transitions between structures and styles. Elias’s approach can be illustrated with the metaphor of the coin and stamp. Everyone within society may be compared to a coin impressed by a stamp that stands for the social pressures under whose influence the individual is formed. But at the same moment every individual represents a stamp that leaves its own mark on

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others and on society (Elias, 2001, p. 55). These two interdependent functions mutually determine existences. Even Mozart’s genius corresponds to this idea. Even he represents both coin and stamp. Mozart’s musical personality was formed by contemporary influences and the musical practices that he mastered in a perfect way. But he also managed to improve these procedures, innovatively transforming and developing new forms of musical expression. The role of genius thus lies in being not only a coin but above all a stamp, leaving an imprint on structures of a given area (or areas) of human activity and affecting its further development. Elias’s little work on Mozart is often overlooked but in the context of the sociology of figuration is important because it shows how it is possible to approach the question of the role played by specific figures within the framework of social development and the historical process. The approach Elias offers is rather general but nevertheless provides important inspiration for further thought. *** It remains to be said, however, that there may be a solution to the problem of the “society of individuals” that is significantly different from the Elias’s conception. Starting from the assumption that the problem we are dealing with can be successfully solved neither by progessively interchanging the individualistic and holistic perspectives nor by the effort to maximize the mutual approach of action and structure; the solution proposed is to some extent inspired by Emile Durkheim and his concept of “homo duplex” (Durkheim, 1913, 1914, 1995). This strategy is not the transfer of dualism of action and structure to duality, as in the case of Giddens, but an approach in which all basic concepts — actor, action, and structure — are grasped from the perspective of the above-mentioned Durkheimian concept. In other words, that it is not just necessary for both perspectives to approach each other maximally, but, so to speak, to “blend” them in a theoretical interpretation that demonstrates that the terms with which we work in sociological theory — actor, action, and structure — are by their very nature dualistic, which means “duplex.” The Hum an Individual and His tory

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Durkheim notes that the human being is divided in an internally contradictory manner. He says that in each of us there are two consciousnesses, two aspects of our mental life: personal and impersonal. Our physical body, on the one hand, is the source of our endless needs and desires, of our egoism. Our socialized being, on the other hand, is the construct of the society that lives and acts through us and controls and diminishes the symptoms of our egoism through internalized moral principles. Durkheim raises the question of the cause of the dualism of human nature and concludes that this antinomy corresponds essentially with the dual existences that we simultaneously lead. One part of our existence is purely individual and rooted in our corporeality. The second part of our existence is social and in it we represent just an extension of society (Durkheim, 1995, p. 30). Society retains, according to the author, its own nature, and thus demands quite different from those of our individual nature. The interests of the whole are not necessarily identical with the interests of its parts. Therefore, society can neither form nor maintain its shape without requiring permanent sacrifices, which are difficult for individuals to make. Only by being superior does it force us to transcend ourselves. And to overcome ourselves means to strip away elements of our nature, which is not without greater or lesser degrees of tension (ibid., p. 31). In trying at this point to follow up Durkheim, and under the inspiration of “homo duplex,” we emphasize and review an element which Durkheim himself dismissed in his theory — the consistent projection of a dualistic view of man not only on to the concept of the actor but also in all other key concepts of sociological theory. Durkheim frequently expresses himself in terms and ideas which have to a certain extent become obsolete and anachronistic. We would not wish now to attempt to defend all his partial claims, but we should make efforts to utilize the most powerful elements which retain validity even up to the present day, in particular the inner ambiguity of “homo duplex.” We would take and enhance this idea, but not strictly in the context and conceptual form in which the French sociologist uses it. We understand it rather as a kind of loose inspiration in exploring those issues

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which Durkheim did not deal with.2 We believe that in accepting this idea we can consistently derive further considerations on the nature of action, interaction, and structure, all of which may be looked at through the perspective of “duplex.” In individualistic conceptions, actions tend to be seen as oneway acts that come from the individual and are oriented so as to impress something or someone in the outside world. However, from the dialectical perspective the whole thing is more complicated. In the very act, from the very beginning, alongside the actor there is the other side, a world in which certain elements are striving to operate. The fact that one begins to act confirms the relevance of the rest of the world (regardless of whether one acts approvingly or disapprovingly). Every act intended to achieve something in this world is actually at the same time a confirmation of its importance. It is thus necessary to recall that a substantial part of social action is in essence the playing of social roles. A person driven by their individual will monitors their personal (Durkheim would probably say, egoistic) interests and intentions. However, this activity is simultaneously social, and for two reasons: first, it is oriented toward individuals and must therefore reckon with the surrounding social reality, its rules and expectations; such action — to one degree or another — reproduces some general role with its respective structural formulas, which, as structuration theory says, are both supportive but also limitations on actions. The acting individual could not be an actor if they did not go through the process of socializing and learning certain societal demands, but at the same time the individual in their actions must make certain decisions and choices that are often dependent not only on the social situation, but also on individual skills, interests, and preferences. Both components in human action — individual and social — interrelate, condition, and support each other.

2. For this reason, we do not engage in the specific context of religion and morality, in which the concept of “homo duplex” by Durkheim is set or with the secondary literature that deals with this subject.

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In terms of work, we can use two dimensions of action, distinguishing them by the terms “voluntarism” and “sociality.” Voluntarism means that the action expresses the individual will or interest of the acting persons, while “sociality” its converse, that is, the interest of the group. Both components interact in the sense that one limits the other in the extent they can be expressed in a specific action.3 In the existing theoretical conception voluntarism is often associated with the issue of motivation and choice; sociality is viewed as a problem for the anticipated action, mainly associated with the concept of social role. While analytically it is possible to distinguish two components, it is extremely difficult because within action they may be multiply-linked. Owing to the fact that the actions of human individuals relate to other individuals, a mutual influence occurs; that is to say, interaction. These interactions may take different forms and intensities, ranging from ephemeral encounters to fixed steady relationships. Interaction theoretically described from the “duplex” perspective appears as a reciprocal relationship between two or more individuals, each of whom has individual and social components. Their individual actions also have a dual character; in each we may note a share of voluntarism and likewise sociality. In simplified model form it can be said that individuals A and B regard each other’s alter ego, seeing that the other — like themselves — has distinctive dispositions and follows personal interests and goals, but meanwhile acts as representative of a certain role or institution, conforming in one way or another to general structural rules, regulations, and behavioral patterns. At the individual level, this is the mutual confrontation of two personalities, at the social level it is a matter of the reproduction of role patterns and institutional rules. Both the individual and social components of 3. From the historical and cultural point of view, it can be assumed that the proportions between voluntarism and sociality may be different in various societies and social groups. As an example the choice of a life partner can help. In traditional societies, the parents or relatives determine the life partner, and often they have to respect a variety of strict social rules; in modern society, the individual usually has the right of choice, often based on very subjective criteria and feelings.

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personalities and actions can through interaction represent both facilitating and inhibiting factors and appear interactively in many different combinations. From this perspective, social structures can be understood as two levels of structural rules. On the first level, there are the general rules that define the basic social institutions and set basic role positions and role activities. On the second level, there are the specific rules that occur in the context of specific human groups, in which certain expectations are derived or enforced on the basis of the individual dispositions of their individual members; these are the rules that are somehow negotiated within these groups, or imposed by power or force. To illustrate the proposed approach, we may use the simple example of the nuclear family as representative of typical social institutions and primary social groups. When thinking about the family as an institution, we give attention to the general rules that define the content of basic roles (mother, father, child), or — if we accept the functionalist approach — that determine the content of the basic functions (reproductive, protective, emotional, economic, educational) carried out by this structural unit. However, if we focus on a particular family as a small social group, we turn our attention to another level of rules which has been formed or imposed by the specific characteristics, requirements, and capabilities of individual family members (e.g., the rules over who is to pick the toddler up from kindergarten, who mows the lawn, or who walks the dog). In this example, we note that institutional rules exist as if dictated by society, while the operating rules of specific human groups emerge from — to one extent or another — the individual characteristics of its members. In practice, the two types of rules interconnect in such a complementary way that it is hard to maintain any separation. There are many similar examples we could mention that show the multilevel character of social structures. One instance would be a sporting event that takes place in accordance with the relevant rules of the sporting discipline, while the game itself is further structured by the strategies and capabilities provided by the teams and their players. The functioning of various types of social The Hum an Individual and His tory

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groups, organizations, and social systems can be considered in a similar way (e.g., in the policy area, systems which generally can be described as democratic, applying democratic rules of governance, may differ in the specific form of their expression — both due to different procedural rules but also and in particular how the representatives of the leading political parties put into effect their power). By no means do we want to deny that social systems are capable of self-regulation. The economic system most convincingly demonstrates this; it has a self-regulating mechanism that Adam Smith long ago dubbed “the invisible hand of the market.” However, as the crisis in this system has recently clearly shown, what is really happening is not just the result of the activity of some unrestrained supra-individual forces and system mechanisms, but the result of many human actors, especially those who, as top managers of financial institutions, made fatally incorrect economic decisions, which, as it turned out, had a massive impact. Concerning the question of individuals with society-wide influence, the explanation is that individuals who — due to social status (elite or monopoly positions) — have the opportunity to influence social macrostructures, complement the level of general macrostructural rules with a further specific layer of rules which reflect their distinctive characters, activities, visions, ideas, wishes, discoveries, or even limitations, pathological tendencies, perverted ideas, or deviations. These may be dispersed, or even inflicted, on a societal scale, due to the power and influence these individuals hold. In such a way one can attempt to clarify — together with Plechanov — “the roles of personality in history” for good or ill, grasping the substance of the impact not only of outstanding historical personalities but tyrants and dictators. On this note, we conclude our survey of historical sociology, with a question rather than an answer. It is natural to be so: Historical sociology is in a way the study of change, or in another way, the study of why history happens, and why it happens the way it does. The nature of change is that it surprises us, much as history itself does. It would be too simplistic to say that the subject is the debate between those who consider that history is open and

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undetermined and those who consider it closed and determined, but to some extent the subject is fought out on these grounds. The debate has been an active and influential one, and taking sides in it has given rise to alliances and connections endorsing or rejecting the theoretical bases of allies and opponents. The variety of theoretical bases and the variations on them, together with the terms which they generate, may be confusing as well as stimulating. It is at least part of the intention of this book to bring these interrelations (between both the ideas themselves and the authors of them) to light, without sacrificing the distinctiveness of each thinker and each idea. Moreover, in the course of following a history of stimulating debate and counter-debate, we can see what has stirred up academic and public debate in a context not usually given. In so doing, it is the hope of this book that the sociological imagination referred to by Charles Wright Mills in the late 1950s would also be stirred. The critical issues of our day require more innovative thinking, further scientific approaches (however partial), and vigorous ideas combined with critically-useful and inspiring language to help us find solutions to the burning questions thrown up by social change or history, as it may otherwise be known.

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Index

Alienation, 75, 76, 83, 232 Anomie, 107 Anthropocentric paradigm, 170 Anti-humanism, 242 Anti-modern phase, 213 Anti-positivism, 18 Atomism, 233 Axial age, 172 182 Bourdieu’s theory, 127 Bourgeois revolution, 81 Breaks theory of, social change, 40, 44 46 British liberal thinking, 230 Calvinism, 95 Capitalism, 56 genesis of, 93 history of, 84 sociological ideas, 84 92 spirit of, 183 Career, 128 Casino economy, 227 Catastrophe, 53, 54, 56, 58 Civil and political rights, 192

Civilization, 38 Civilizational analysis of axial age, 172 182 civilizing process, 159 167 human condition, paradigms of, 167 171 Civilizational growth, 51 Civilization analysis, contemporary, 157 Classical industrial modernity, 232 Cognitive-rational control, 27 Collapse, 56, 59 Collective consciousness, 106 Collective memory, 31 on sociological ideas, 109 116 Communicative memory, 114 Conflict theory, 2, 128 135 appendix to, 136 137 Consensus and conflict, 17 Consensus theory, 70 Contemporary capitalism, 161 Contemporary civilization analysis, 157

289

Contemporary modernization, 181 Contemporary sociological theory, 254 Continuous development, 35 Convergence theory, 206 Cosmo-centric paradigm, 171 Crisis, 53 65 Critical point, 52 Critical realism, 200 Cultural capital, 126 Cultural memory, 114 Cultural super-systems, 37 Cyclical development theories, 36 39 Dark side, of modernization banality of evil, 198 200 ideological myths and totalitarian tendencies, 203 207 open society, advocate for, 200 203 Degree of division of labor, 231 Degree of interdependence, 49 Degrees of tension, 258 Dependency theory, 41 Developmental discontinuity theories, 40 Dialectical approach, 79 Division of labor principle of, 49, 72 Dualism, 257, 258 Durée, 27, 29, 110 Economic capital, 125 Economic crises, 54, 64

290

Index

Equal rights, 124 Evolutionary theory, 49 52 Evolutionism, 34 Fetishism, 71 Figuration concept of, 160 Figurations, 240 241 Freudian terminology, 164 Functional differentiation, 146 149 Global economic balance of power, 39 Historical and cultural formations, 230 Historical cycles, 34 Historical development, 34 evolutionary and revolutionary, 36 Historical materialism, 34, 40 42, 73 84 Historical sociological thinking, 67 Historical sociology, 12 interrelationship, 2 path to, 3 6 theoretical dilemmas, 16 19 Holism, 17 18, 232 242 Homo duplex, 257, 258 Homo oeconomicus, 235 Human behavior, 248, 250, 253 Human personality, 231 Human relationships, structure of, 231

Idealistic culture, 37 Idiocy of rural life, 186 Imagined community, 189 Individualism concept of, 230 and holism, 17 18, 232 242 place in history, 254 263 Individualization characteristic of, 231 homo sociologicus, 242 254 in perspective of historical, 230 232 sociological thinking, 230 232 Individuals behavior, 243 fundamental singularity of, 232 social action of, 234 social roles, 243 voluntarism and free will, 236 Inspirational power, 73 Intellectual formation, 85 Intellectual personality, 68 Interpersonal communication, 50 Interpersonal relationships, 237 Judaism, 78 Knowledge society, 217 Kratos-centric, 170 Linear continuous development, theory of, 47 Longue durée, 29, 31, 45, 140

Macro-actors, 256 Marxism, 40 Marx’s idea, 81 Marx’s theory of alienation, 76, 232 Marx’s theory of classes, 86 Mass society, 199 Memory of things, 113 114 Metaphysical stage, 71 Methods of knowledge, 70 Micro- and macro-perspectives, 18 Mimetic memory, 113 Modernity, divergent forms of, 179 Modernization theory, 213 215 Modern society citizens and state, 185 186 coercion and violence, 208 211 first to second modernity, 212 228 formation of, 188 197 modernization, dark side of, 197 207 modernization theory, 213 215 national interest, 194 197 nationalism and high culture, 190 194 network power, 211 212 pathways to, 185 188 social conflict in, 133 135 social revolution, different types of, 186 187 Index

291

transformations of contemporary societies, 216 228 wars, conflicts, and violence, 207 212 Monasticism, 97 Monotheism, 71 National interest, 194 197 Nationalism and high culture, 190 194 National movement, 195, 196 neo-Kantian, 86 neo-Marxism, 41 neo-positivism, 68 Objective-idealistic philosophy, 75 Parsons’ theory, 122 Personality intellectual, 68 roles of, 262 social components of, 260 261 sociology of, 242 Political and social freedoms, 192 Political history, 8 Political power, 53 Polytheism, 71 Positive stage, 71 Positivism, 18, 68, 69, 103 Poststructuralism, 137 146 Pre-sociological thinking, 8 Proletarian revolution, 80 Protestantism, 78, 90, 95, 230

292

Index

Psycho-centric, 171 Punitive law, 104 Puritanism, 96 Rationalization, of time, 92 102 Relationships complementary role, 245 interpersonal, 237 structure of, 231 Religion of humanity, 71 Risk, 56 59 Risk society, 56 Social capital, 127 Social change, 263 breaks, theory of, 40, 44 46 challenge of, 53 65 collective actor of, 43 44, 81 cyclical development, theories of, 36 39 and developmental discontinuity, theories of, 40 different approaches, 33 53 etymology and semantics of the concept of crisis, 54 56 evolutionary theory, 49 52 historical time, division of, 28 31 issue of, 52 53, 64 65 linear continuous development, theory of, 47 materialist conception of history, 40 42

plurality of explanatory frameworks, 61 64 revolution, 42 43 risk, crisis, catastrophe, and collapse, 56 59 sequential and processual explanatory models, 47 48 temporalized sociology, 24 28 time, dimension of, 21 33 Social classes, 73 Social complexity, 49 Social conflict, 246 concept of, 43 in modern society, 133 135 Social constructivism, 254 Social crisis, 53 etymology and semantics concept of, 54 56 of European sciences, 54 of history, 55 Social development, 257 characteristics of, 51 laws of, 202 Social differentiation, 49 Social dynamics, 35, 68 72 Social evolution Social functions, of conflicts, 130 133 Social inequality, 89 90, 123 128 in contemporary society, 124 Socialism, 78 Social mobility, 123 128, 202 Social movements, 42, 43

Social organism, 70, 119 evolution of, 72 73 Social physics, 69 Social power, 42 mechanisms of, 100 Social reforms, 201 Social relationship, 89 Social revolution, 76, 188 different types of, 186 187 in international context, 187 188 Social roles, 253 distribution of power, 247 of individuals, 243 Social stagnation, 177 Social statics, 68 72 Social stratification, 123 128 Social system and evolution, 119 122 Socio-cultural formations, 155 Socioeconomic formation, 80 Sociological ideas about social facts, 102 109 capitalism, 84 92 on collective memory, 109 116 historical materialism, 73 84 predecessors, 74 78 rationalization of, 92 102 social organism, evolution of, 72 73 statics and dynamics, 68 72 Sociological theory, 25, 236 functions of, 32 Sociological thinking, 230 232 history of, 35 Sociologism, 110 Index

293

Structural functionalism, 2, 120 Structuralism, 26, 45, 137 146 Symbolic capital, 127 Systemic theory, 119 Systems theory, 32 Temporality, 216 Temporalized sociology, Social change, 24 28 Thanatos-centric paradigm, 170, 171 Theocentric paradigm, 170 Theological stage, 71 Theory of conflict, 50 Time, 21 33, 92 102 Time-space compression, 53

294

Index

Totalitarianism, 198, 199, 203 Traditionalism, 94 Value-free sociology, 87 Variable Structures, 140 146 Voluntarism, 260 Western philosophy, 74 Western thinking between individual and society, 229 World economy, internationalization of, 226 World-system, 149 154