The Social Psychology of Robert E. Park: Human Nature,Self, Personality and Social Structure

Robert E. Park is widely recognized today for his contributions to urban sociology, race relations and collective behavior but his social psychology has been largely neglected. Park's inclusive and loose framework covered his interest in: (1) human nature and the bio-physiological instincts which for him were raw materials of personality; (2) formulation of self concept as an organization of roles; and (3) micro-macro linkages between individual and social structure. Each one of Park's three themes is still important for symbolic interaction theory and offers insights into contemporary investigations of emotions, role acquisition and identity.     

Robert E. Park and the Theoretical Content of Chicago Sociology: 1920–1940*

Drawing on the entire body of Robert E. Park's work published in the period 1921–1944, this paper describes his general theoretical system at three points in time: in 1921, between 1922 and 1929, and from 1930 to 1944. Park refined and altered his general theory of society over this period partly because of ambiguities in his original 1921 formulation and partly because of pressure from changing social and intellectual milieux. Park is treated as the leading theorist of the Chicago School of Sociology, and this account of his theoretical system is used as a base for assessing the validity of five different contemporary claims about the theoretical contributions of the Chicago School of Sociology.     

Conflicts in the habitus: the emotional work of becoming modern

This article argues that Bourdieu's concept of habitus, and, in particular, the way habitus is transmitted intergenerationally, can be enhanced by considering conflictual conscious and unconscious processes that emerge in relationships. We suggest that Christopher Bollas's discussions of the ‘unthought known’ and of ‘transformational objects’ add relational depth to the concept of habitus and thus contribute to developing a more psycho‐social understanding of the relation between agency and change. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with a socially mobile chain of a middle‐class grandmother, mother and daughter in a period of rapid change, we describe how conflicts in the habitus are produced relationally and can either impede or motivate desires for change. Relational and object relational psychoanalytic theories offer a way to move beyond what we consider a problem in Bourdieu's theory of habitus that derives from his assumption of a subject who either consciously opts for change in habitus when faced with new social demands or non‐consciously and unconflictually reproduces habitus.     

Homo colossus and the technological turn‐around

Unceasing technological advance is culturally defined as advantageous, but sociologists need to see it in ecological terms. Duncan's P.O.E.T notation heightens contrast between Ogburn's view of technology as a new environment and Park's attention to technologically extended people. Technologically colossal humans more rapidly exhaust carrying capacity—the maximum load an environment can sustain without undergoing degradation. Load has two dimensions (population, and per capita impacts). Until the industrial revolution reversed the effect, technology enlarged carrying capacity. Now technology enlarges per capita impacts and resource appetites. Homo colossus—man equipped with voracious technology—has reverted to hunting and gathering ("exploration and development") and his machines have become his ecological competitors. The number of people a finite world can support indefinitely is thus decreasing instead of increasing.     

Survivors of Woman Abuse

Abstract

The feminist social work and related literature on abused women has focused on women's processes of empowerment but has overlooked the question of women's movement from individual survival to collective resistance. In this feminist qualitative study, I explore the processes through which survivors of abuse by male partners become involved in collective action for social change. Using story telling as a research method, I interviewed 11 women about the processes, factors, insights, and events that prompted them to act collectively to address violence against women. I found that women's movement from individual survival to collective action entails significant changes in consciousness and subjectivity. Women's processes of conscientization are complex, contradictory and often painful because they involve political and psychic dimensions of subjectivity, protracted struggles with contradictions and conflict, and resistance to knowledge that threatens to unsettle relatively stable notions of identity. I suggest that feminist social work theory and practice must take into account three interrelated elements of women's transformative journeys: the discursive and material conditions that facilitate women's movement to collective action; the social, material and psychic costs of women's growth; and the multifaceted and difficult nature of women's journey in recognizing and naming abuse, making sense of their experiences, and acting on this knowledge to work for change. I recommend that feminist social work practice with survivors recognize that survivors can and do contribute to social change, and develop new, more inclusive liberatory models of working with survivors of abuse.     

Bourdieu,Wharton and Changing Culture in The Age of Innocence

Although critics often attribute the failure of Edith Wharton's characters to achieve happiness to dichotomous, even mutually exclusive causes - that is, to deficiency of character or to force of circumstance - the theories of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu help to illuminate the more complex cultural and literary project at the heart of Wharton's work. Bourdieu's notions of field, habitus and capital speak to the dynamic rather than static nature of social relations in The Age of Innocence, Wharton's penultimate novel about conflict between stultifying social conventions and imagined but seldom realized escapes from such restrictions. Bourdieu's work helps us to see how Wharton embraces fluid rather fixed notions of culture in both her fiction and life. Vacillating throughout the novel between love for May Welland and for Ellen Olenska, Newland Archer stands at a crossroads between the fields of marriage and romance - between social convention and individual desire. Pulled by the competing demands of these fields, he progressively loses capital in both. Wharton documents the process by which Archer becomes constrained by a habitus shared with May; she also demonstrates - through multiple examples of cultural transformation - the degree to which he creates his own experience of having missed ‘the flower of life’. Archer's problem, then, is not only the field in which he operates but his acceptance of the narrowness of this field. In contrast, through the character of Ellen Olenska as well as minor figures such as Catherine Mingott, Bob Spicer, Julius Beaufort, Emerson Sillerton and Dallas Archer, Wharton affirms the processes of social change and shows that, although one cannot help replicating social hierarchies and taste, one can participate in the constructing one's social destiny.     

HERBERT BLUMER'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO TWENTIETH-CENTURY SOCIOLOGY

Herbert Blumer's work has had considerable impact on the growth of twentieth-century sociology. He kept alive an interest in George Mead at a time when Pragmatism floundered. Although it is unlikely that Mead's work would have been overlooked, there can be no question that Blumer's forceful advocacy helped bring it to the forefront of modern social thought. Park first organized the subfield of collective behavior, but it was Blumer who kept it going in the face of opposition from structural-functionalism. Whether or not collective behavior endures as a separate area of specialization, sociologists will have to concern themselves with the manner in which human beings adapt to problematic situations. Although his views on methodology have been controversial, some of his positions will probably prevail. His insistence on the direct observation of people in their indigenous settings and his contention that human agency must be taken into account in explanations of social processes are difficult to counter.     

The Formative Context of Organizational Hierarchies and Discourse: Implications for Organizational Change and Gender Relations

Society as artifact, meaning society as a thing that is made and imagined, is a central aspect of Roberto Unger's constructive social theory. This article develops Unger's social theory, specifically his notions of organizational hierarchy, discourse, and organizational change, and applies it to an understanding of gender relations at work. Constructive social theory is defined with a focus on the instrumental concept of formative context. A critical perspective of Unger's constructive social theory is also presented to illustrate its strengths, challenges and limitations. Drawing on literature from a variety of sources and perspectives, organizational hierarchy, organizational discourse, organizational change and gender relations are viewed through a formative context lens. The concept is then applied as a framework for organizational change through change in organizational discourse, specifically language. Change in organizational discourse through language is utilized as a means of improving gender relations: in particular, the advancement of women in organizations.     

Reactivating the ‘communist hypothesis’: Alain Badiou and social work

It has been argued that Alain Badiou could contribute to social work's engagement with social theory. This paper critically responds to this assertion and identifies some of the theoretical problems associated with Badiou's core conceptualisations. Divided into two sections, it will begin by outlining his main thematic preoccupations and will go on to focus on his interpretation of the significance of Saint Paul, the apostle. The second half of the paper will dwell on Webb's attempt to connect Badiou to social work so as to disrupt focal ideas on ‘diversity’ and ‘difference’. This section will conclude by critically exploring Badiou's comments on children, children's rights and abuse. Although, so far receiving no attention in the social work literature, his interventions on these matters are problematic in that they imply that children lie outside the ‘one world’ politics that he promotes. Despite such criticisms, it is concluded Badiou's theorisation needs to be included within the academic literature of European social work.     

Effect of Husbands' Employment Status on Their Wives' Subjective Well‐being in Korea

This study used data from the Korea Labor and Income Panel Survey (2001, 2003–2007) to estimate the effect of a husband's unemployment on his wife's subjective well‐being (SWB). Ordinal and pooled binary logistic regression models were estimated using 20,099 observations from a sample of 4,569 married women; a fixed‐effects logistic regression model was also estimated using 5,514 observations from a restricted sample of 1,070 wives who experienced at least 1 change in SWB over the follow‐up period. The findings indicated that a husband's unemployment was detrimental to his wife's SWB. This spillover effect appeared to be mediated in part through nonpecuniary factors (i.e., dissatisfaction with family and social relations). These findings suggest that, beyond income loss and the well‐being of unemployed individuals, the social cost of unemployment should consider the negative effects of unemployment on the family, in particular the spouse.     

Disenchantment and its discontents: Weberian perspectives on science and technology*

Weber's ideas about science and technology have largely been neglected by comparison with his views of modern politics and economics. Yet his notion of disenchantment is central to his conception of modern society and to his comparative studies of the rise of Western rationalism. This importance is underlined by the use to which Weber's ideas have been put by two contemporary thinkers. Ernest Gellner extends the notion of disenchantment in his account of the cognitive style of industrial society, but argues that it does not necessarily pose the threat which Weber's cultural pessimism suggests. Randall Collins, on the other hand, develops a Weberian account of the social basis for technological change, arguing that geopolitical centres give rise to technological innovation. In view of the urgency of the question of the role of science and technology in modern society, these Weberian perspectives provide an important theoretical tool since they offer a framework in which this question can be addressed.     

Free agent or ‘conscious automaton’? Contrasting interpretations of the individual in Spencer's writing on social and moral life

Herbert Spencer remains an important and intriguing figure in thinking about political, social and moral matters. At present his writings in relation to idealist thought, social policy, sociology and ethics are undergoing reassessment. This article is concerned with some recent interpretations of Spencer on individuals in social life. It looks in some detail at Spencer's work on psychology and sociology as well as on ethics, seeking to establish how Spencer understood people as social individuals. In particular the neglect of Spencer's denial of freedom of the will is identified as a problem in some recent interpretations. One of his contemporary critics, J.E. Cairnes, charged that Spencer's own theory of social evolution left even Spencer himself the status of only a ‘conscious automaton’. This article, drawing on a range of past and present interpretative discussions of Spencer, seeks to show that Spencerian individuals are psychically and socially so constituted as to be only indirectly responsive to moral suasion, even to that of his own Principles of Ethics as he himself acknowledged. Whilst overtly reconstructionist projects to develop a liberal utilitarianism out of Spencer to enliven political and philosophical debate for today are worthwhile—dead theorists have uses—care needs to be taken that the original context and its concerns with the processes associated with innovation (and decay) in social life are not thereby eclipsed, the more so since in some important respects they have recently received little systematic attention even though the issues have contemporary relevance in sociology.     

Relationality and social interaction1

This paper explores Bourdieu's account of a relational social space, and his relative neglect of social interaction within this framework. Bourdieu includes social capital as one of the key relational elements of his social space, but says much less about it than economic or cultural capital, and levels of social capital are rarely measured in his work. Bourdieu is reluctant to focus on the content of social networks as part of his rejection of substantialist thinking. The neglect of substantive networks creates problems for Bourdieu's framework, because many of Bourdieu's core concepts rest upon assumptions about their interactional properties (in particular, the prevalence of homophilous differential association) which are left unexamined. It is argued here that Bourdieu's neglect of the substance of social networks is related to the criticisms that Bourdieu's framework often encounters, and that this neglect bears re‐examination, since it is helpful to think of the ways in which differentiated social networks contribute to the development of habitus, help form fields, and so constitute the intersubjective social relations within which sociality, and practice more generally, occur.     

Is Vygotsky Relevant? Vygotsky's Marxist Psychology

This article explores the connections between Vygotsky's psychology and Marxism, arguing that his was a “Marxist psychology” in its “historical foundation”: a specific conception of history. This conception of history is evident in Vygotsky's analysis and diagnosis of the crisis in psychology. The creation of a Marxist, general psychology was the historical task that was defined by this crisis, and his developmental psychology was the historical project of such a psychology. In his practice of the methodology of this general psychology, Vygotsky recounted “child history”: the history of the genesis of mind. The conception of history evident in Crisis throws new light on Vygotsky's texts on child development: They tell a history of the objective tendencies of consciousness, of the dialectical processes of sublation, and of self-mastery. As Vygotsky interpreted the higher mental functions, they are manifestations of the child's ability to master himself or herself as a consequence of the “social moment” of consciousness. In fostering these functions, one shaped a human consciousness capable of free and deliberate choice.     

Method, narrative and historiography in Michael Mann's sociology of state development

‘This paper argues that the work of Michael Mann is distinguishable from neo‐Weberian sociology in four ways. The first is his fusion of structural conceptions of large‐scale social change to the empirics of individual action. The second is his fourpart theorisation of social power and its implications for the analysis of the state. The third is his endeavour to find a middle ground between comparativist and linear historiographies. The fourth is his combination of contextual specificity and nomothetic generality. While each of these areas will be approached critically, the paper will conclude that Mann's sociology has significantly contributed to our understanding of macro‐historical change.’     

On the Ethnicisation of New Zealand Politics: The Foreshore and Seabed Controversy in Context1

As a case study, the author looks at developments since 2003 in the controversy around the ownership of the New Zealand foreshore and seabed. She argues in favour of a detailed analysis of the relationships between the minority and majority populations and their impact on internal tensions and mobilisation, as well as on the development of ideologies. The article identifies key factors, moments and processes in recent New Zealand history that combined and had the effect of emphasising ethnic differences and polarising the relationships between the minority and majority populations. The analysis relies on Eric Schwimmer's work, in particular on his definitions of ‘real competition’ and ‘symbolic competition’.     

Alternative approaches to researching social capital: A comment on van Deth's measuring social capital

This paper responds to van Deth's overview of empirical research on social capital and the difficulties of measuring the concept. We entirely agree with many of the problems that he identifies with the dominant mode of enquiry to date: namely survey and polling methods of attitudinal data. We are sure there are ways of improving on such quantitative methods although we are of the view that qualitative research is especially helpful for exploring the processes of social capital formation and the relationship between networks and norms so crucial to Putnam's use of the concept. Briefly, we discuss our own qualititive work involving intensive interviews with 120 activists drawn from a Citizens Audit of Britain. We address the importance of pre-existing trust and informal processes of mobilization, the significance of experiences of group involvement for generating norms of trust as well as distrust and the extent to which evaluations of such experiences influence wider views of participation and democracy in Britain. In sum, we totally endorse van Deth's call for the greater use of 'multi-methods and multi-level srategies' in empirical research by extending his plea to consider the valuable role of qualitative methods in the study of social capital.     

Nikolai Gogol'’s Self-Fashioning in the 1830s: The Postcolonial Perspective

This study examines Gogol'’s complex self-fashioning during the time of the creation and reception of his Ukrainian tales Vechera na khutore bliz Dikan'ki [Evenings on a Farm near Dikan'ka] (1831–1832) in light of the postcolonial concept of mimicry. Gogol'’s self-fashioning is studied through his submission to the symbolic power responsible for branding him as the Other in imperial Russian culture, as well as through his deliberate strategy of mimicry. Not only did Gogol'’s marginal social status and his Ukrainian ethnicity create a social hierarchy responsible for fashioning him as “an outsider within” imperial culture, Gogol' himself engaged in the colonial mimicry, trying to reverse the colonial gaze that imagined him as a “sly” Ukrainian. Challenging the accepted view of Gogol' as one who internalized the colonial stereotype of a “sly” Ukrainian, this study treats Gogol'’s identity as strategic, positional, and ambivalent. The first part of the study focuses on the manipulation of stereotypes of the Other within the Russian nationalist imagination in the early 1830s; the second part examines Gogol'’s ambivalent visual self-representation and social performance that simultaneously mimicked and menaced the colonial authority.     

Property,wealth, and social change: Piketty as a social science engineer

This paper applauds the vision and originality of Piketty's Capital and Ideology. We draw attention to the distinctive methodological perspective which he adopts, which we liken to call “social science engineering.” This allows a problem oriented perspective on long‐term global social change which sidesteps siloed disciplinary debates in social science and history about the meaning of modernity, the rise of capitalism, the formation of social groups, and the primacy of nations. We bring out how his theory of property permits him to take forward his overarching insight that economic growth leads to wealth accumulation. This, therefore, challenges long standing sociological perspectives by insisting that modernity is a conservative, rather than a revolutionary and transformative process. We build on this essential contribution by noting some areas where his work can push forward even further, notably that his focus on shifting relativities obscures qualitative historical changes, and more particularly means his analysis of the 20th century is not as provocative as that of the 19th century.     

Social Control and Emotions

This is the first article in Symbolic Interaction's symposium in tribute to Tamotsu (Tom) Shibutani (1920–2004). The author, a student in Shibutani's graduate course on social control, discusses his teacher's ideas and their evolution into his own. The article provides ample basis for the author's observation: a scholar's contribution can be measured not only by the cumulative corpus of his or her published work, but also by the influence that this individual has had on the work of others.