Hi Folks so in this particular mini
lecture we will be going
over the key thinkers that we build sociological theory on.
of course you can take entire classes that are taught about
sociological theory and in this small
amount of time you're getting just a
glimpse into
some of the key ideas from some
of our founding thinkers
So Karl Marx, you've certainly heard  about this person
Marx is shared by several different disciplines whether it is
political science sociology, philosophy
his ideas continue to be very influential
Karl Marx also as a construct has a pretty contentious
place in American culture
so often being a marxist is seen as
almost a slur. You aren't consider an American
if you're a Marxist
you're seen as a traitor or too radical
many have argued that the ideas that Marx presented have actually been proven as
incomplete  especially with the fall of the Soviet Union
on the other hand, Marx gave us many insights
that have so relevant even in 2020. So essentially we are going to look at
unpacking Marx and finding ideas from Marx that can be applied to
our present day society. So again we could spend an entire
semester or even a year looking at Marx's ideas.
Here, I am presenting a few
hopefully the sources I have shared with you in our module
will help you get a fuller picture of the different thinkers so one idea that is
familiar to a lot of people is that Marx argued
that the history of all nations is the history of class struggle
so as we discussed before the entire conflict paradigm in Sociology
is built on Marx's idea of class struggle
he looks at the bourgeoisie or the capitalist class
being in conflict with the proletariat which is the working class
capitalists vs. the workers. Marx believes that
the workers will be the vanguard, leaders
of communist revolution
so Marx believes that we will rise out of
our false consciousness into
class consciousness
and eventually we'll see a 
transformation of society from capitalism
to communism where the premise will be from each
according to his ability to each according to his need
like many of the thinkers of his time, Marx was also interested in the impact
and influence of religion and he had a pretty negative perspective on religion
he saw it as an opiate of the masses that keeps the masses complacent
and locked in false consciousness
Marx believes that religion keeps all of us really tame
another really important idea from Marx is this idea of alienation
in fact one of your assignments during this week will about the alienation
from not only the products of our labor but also from each other
Marx believed that
in a society that has become highly capitalist you can think of the assembly line
production where we're disconnected from the products of our own labor
similarly if you apply that to a consumer society
we are alienated from the products that we consume
not many of us think about where did our laptops and tablets come from
where are we getting this fast fashion from when we buy a 20 dollar dress from H&M
who is actually responsible for the creation of those products
so alienation is definitely an idea that's very relevant
to present day society Marx has been called a materialist because he believes
that the economic relations
give rise to all other institutions in
society. The economics is the relationships of production where the
bourgeoisie own everything and the workers own only their labor
this is inherently exploitative because the only way you can keep reducing the
cost of production which is essential for profit
maximization
is if you keep reducing wages
so this is why it's an inherently exploitative system
the base which for Marx is economics the base gives rise to the
superstructure which consists of
all of these other institutions
including education family religion politics
which perform the job of maintaining and legitimating the base
so we go to school and the message we get is jump into the rat race
get an education so you can have a career, make money, buy a house and so on
so from Marx's perspective, the job of your family, education
religion etcetra
is all to create productive workers
who will conform to the system not make any trouble
now if you turn to Weber you will a see a flip of this particular model that I was showing you
whereas Marx is arguing that Economics gives rise
to other kinds of ideological structures
Weber would argue that it's in fact ideas that give rise to a particular
economic system and so Max Weber who is often identified with the symbolic interactionist paradigm
in sociology presents to us his famous work on the protestant ethic
and the spirit of capitalism
where he's talking about this particular
brand of protestantism, Calvisnism in the US.
that morphs into the spirit of capitalism
because the characteristics of
this particular brand of protestantism
was having the salvation anxiety. So salvation anxiety means you
don't know if you're going to get salvation only thing that gets you closer to salvation is
rigorous discipline, rational application of labor
so if you were to live a very simple lifestyle, very frugal, invest
then you get closer to success in after life
so this particular ideology is very conducive to the development
and maintenance of a capitalist system
Marx was arguing that economics gives rise to other things like religion
which in turn maintain the economics. Weber is saying that a particular ideology
gives rise to an economic system
Weber also develops the idea of the iron cage of rationality where he's saying that
he's examining the growth of bureaucracy in a modernized society
he says we'll get to a point where
we'll start valuing rationality or efficiency for the sake of efficiency
we'll forget that efficiency is a means to an end and it'll get to a point
where efficiency becomes an end in itself in other words we'll start prioritizing
rationality and efficiency without quite understanding why we're doing that
these ideas have been developed by a modern day sociologist called George Ritzer
into what he calls McDonaldization of society
so the idea that we standardize everything, we make it super efficient
and at some point that rationality becomes irrational
great example of that is presented in the documentary Food Inc.
I think I've plugged in Food Inc. before. It's a great documentary
for showing how 5 corporations are in charge of producing all the meat in our society
highly efficient in giant factories etc.
but there are many unintended consequences of that
efficiency including E Coli outbreaks
including the fact that we literally have shit in our burgers
that would be a great idea to illustrate that rationality without any purpose can become irrational
Weber also introduces a more complex status hierarchy system
So where as Marx is looking at all of class struggle being between these two classes the capitalists and the
Workers. Weber complicates that more by looking at other sources of social prestige
The example he provides for instance
what's the status of an out of work lawyer
this lawyer may not be making money but in terms of the status hierarchy
he might still be in a higher rung finally a really important idea from Weber
is also this notion of Verstehen
one of the things we associate with Weber is value free sociology
Weber is acknowledging the biases that we bring
to research and trying to be as objective as possibly can
but at the same time he's introducing this idea of Verstehen
which is perspective taking. He is the one emphasizing that in
social research it's really important to give voice to your subjects
in many ways launching this idea that social reality can be very different based on the context
this was not a
well accepted idea until Weber pointing out that unless you take perspective
you don't understand that there can be multiple perspectives possible
ok so what I'm going to do now is save the other
thinkers that we have for our next mini lecture again I want to remind you
to look at the additional sources. You'll find clips for each thinker and that will
help you understand the historical context in which they were writing
and how their ideas continue to influence a lot of the
conceptualization that we do today. In fact that should be our exercise to apply
all these ideas like
alienation rationality
to our society today. I am going to end there and we'll talk about the
other thinkers in my next mini lecture.
