Classical Social Theorists

Classical Social Theorists

When trying to compare three social theorists to each other, you must first try to understand the intricacies that are entangled within each theory itself. Theorists, by nature, create theories that can be debated from all angles but must be a tight fit in order to be considered applicable to society. Theology as a single entity is constructed from deep intellectual thought. When social theorist begin to develop there theoretical perspectives, they seem to have an overwhelming grasp on the concepts they try to convey to us. Since it is extremely difficult to have such a complete strong hold on social issues such as family, politics and economics, it is important to know and understand the basic principles that underline the theories we study. To compare the theories of Georg Simmel, Vilfredo Pareto, and George Herbert Mead, I will first discuss the basic strengths and weaknesses of their theories.

Simmel was a conflict theorist who sought to investigate "pure or formal sociology" by trying to understand the societal forms themselves. Pure sociology refers to the investigation of the forms of interaction that underlie political, economic, religious, and sexual behaviors. Simmel was inspired by social differentiation and he was interested in the change that urbanization, industrialization brought to society (Li, Lecture). Unlike the work of Mead and Pareto, Simmel's theories were non traditional and his topics varied throughout societies many issues. Simmel thought that by focusing on the basic properties of interaction, per se, that sociology could discover the underlining processes of social reality (Turner, P.265).

Simmel's web of group affiliations is a sociological analysis of how patterns of group participation are altered with social differentiation and the consequences of such alterations for people's everyday behavior (Turner P. 268). People become attached to certain groups because of similarities of talents, inclinations and activities and other factors of which they have some control. Simmel first talked about this in his social differentiation which is seen by most as not being very use full in its early stages.

Simmel saw society as Sociation /Association. He was interested in how people get connected. He saw society as a web of intricate multiple relations between individuals. He said society was merely a name for a number of individuals associated by interaction (Li, Lecture).

Simmel saw positive functions of conflict in the development of society. He said that competition forces people to establish ties with one another in a web of affiliation, and in groups, conflict increases the degree of social solidarity within each group and at the same time, decreases the level of tolerance for deviance.

Aside from seeing conflict as a social form, Simmel also saw money as a social form. Simmel's Philosophy of Money is a stab at exposing how the forms of interaction affect the basic nature of social relations independently of their specific content.

Simmel's major contribution to sociology resides in his concern with the basic forms of interaction. Unlike Mead and Pareto, Simmel is hard to follow because he jumps from topic to topic, from the micro to the macro and from the historical past to contemporary situations in his time. But in the end, his goal is similar to all other theorists: to explain many empirical events with a few highly abstract models and principles. (Turner P. 287)

Although he rejected many of the points of positivist doctrines, Vilfredo Pareto was somewhat of a positivist whose major contribution to sociology was his Circulation of Elites conspiracy theory documented in The Rise and Fall of the Elites. Also known as the Father of Mathematics, Pareto thought that economics limited itself to a single aspect of human action and therefore, devoted his studies to social theory. Pareto also thought that human affairs were largely guided by non logical, non traditional actions, or what he called "sentiments" (Li, Lecture). In Pareto's view, all human behavior is one of six instinctive drives which is seen by some as being just awkward terminology being used to emphasize a simple analytical and empirical point that human behavior is motivated in basic directions.

Pareto's theory of social change suggests that society is a system of forces in equilibrium. The logic being that prolonged movement in one direction tends to generate countervailing pressures, which at first half, and then reverse, the direction of change.

His Circulation of Elites is a fascinating conspiracy theory that says at any time political processes are dominated by elites whose members are either lions or foxes, using either force co-optation as methods of social control. Correspondingly, economic processes are dominated by elites, whose members are either rentiers or speculators.

The criticism towards Pareto spawns from his work on sentiments, it is said that it is not very clear and hard to quantify and that it is inadequate to help us see motivational forces. Other criticisms were based on his micro perspective of looking at things and not taking the big picture into account.

Unlike Simmel who thought that society was derived from group power, network power and not on individual process, George Herbert Mead, a symbolic interactionist, focused his thought on the role taking of individual behaviors. By emphasizing the process underlying social structures, Mead presents a very dynamic view of society for not only is society shaped by role taking, it can be altered by the unchanged processes.

Mead was the originator of the thought of Mind, Self, and Society. This thought is shaped by thinking about your individual self through mind and how society sees you. Mead liked to look at the mind as something reflective; he said the mind was created by responses to environmental stimuli. He looked at the self as emerging out of the facility of using symbols and taking roles of others. He