Announcement!

Dear Bss 3-1:

Marami yata wala sa inyo nung Friday. Gumaganti kayo ha.


Anyway, may dalawa tayong reflection:

1. Compare ther role taking theory ni Mead sa Looking glass self at Impression management ni Goffman

2. Can you really consider Phenomenology as sociological? Why or why not?

IMPOTANT: PLease check out the mirror site at http://angsosyoklasrum.fil.ph
May dedicated chat room to at komiks. Nandun din yung pulldown menu ng blogs.

Thanks. Please visit the site para kumarga sa counter.Thanks.

Justin

The Systems Theory

Systems Theory

Many forms of sociology utilize to the word, 'system," when describing society. However, systems theory develops this idea of society as a system in specific ways.
Systems theory was derived explicitly from hard science. An underlying premise is that its assertions are wholly consistent with and applicable to all sciences. Anything one might theorize about a social system should be applicable to non-human systems as well, from this viewpoint.

This highly scientific outlook signals one of the major differences between systems theory and, for example, structural functionalism. From a functionalist perspective, the components of the system are functional—or perhaps dysfunctional—and there is an underlying philosophical position regarding the relative inappropriateness of social change. In functionalism, it is often "better" not to make a change, because the most important imperative is to maintain the social order.
By contrast, in systems theory, it is more that the components of the system simply are. Change is neither welcomed nor disdained, but assumed. The systems theorist dispassionately explores how a system is affected by a given change. Systems theory is also more multi-leveled than functionalism. Small, micro-level components can also be viewed as systems unto themselves that ultimately contribute to the large-scale system of society. This also makes systems theory different from symbolic interactionism or ethnomethodology. In systems theory, two people talking is viewed as a system—and part of some larger system.
Since the idea is to operate on virtually all levels of society, systems theory by nature avoids segmented or piecemeal analysis. It is intended to not just look at economic systems or integration or bureaucracy or objective culture. Instead—once again—all of these considerations are viewed from the standpoint of being systems, or parts of systems, that are interrelated.
Thus, systems theory avoids discussion of social facts, because from this perspective it is difficult if not impossible to state that here is Social Fact A and here is Social Fact B. Instead, everything interrelates with everything else. Moreover, everything is a process, and so subject to change. What is meant by "prejudice," for example, can be different from one place and time to the next, depending on the systems that create or perpetuate it.
Many of the key concepts and principles of systems theory were advanced by Walter Buckley. Another theorist, Niklas Luhmann, famously built upon the foundation of systems theory to develop a considerable body of work.

Walter Buckley

Buckley approaches systems theory cybernetically. That is to say, like other kinds of scientists, he is interested in how the system at hand maintains control over itself.

He offers that there are three basic types of systems. These types are differentiated on the basis of how the interrelationship of their parts accomplish the transfer of energy and/or information. In other words, systems exist to in some way take in, process, and then transfer back out something of a material nature, a non-material nature—or both. Mechanical systems exist to transfer energy. Sociocultural systems transfer information. Organic systems transfer both.
Another important distinction between types of systems is the extent to which they are open or closed. Relatively open systems tend toward negentropy, or elaboration. This means that over time, open systems tend to adapt or diversify in ways that increase their complexity and possibilities. More closed systems tend more toward entropy, or running down. when a system is less flexible, it tends to not welcome or address new kinds of data or competing social forces.
Mechanical systems (dealing with energy) tend to be the most closed, while sociocultural systems (dealing with information) tend to to be most open. This openness to feedback from the environment can help sociocultural systems obtain their goals. Yet it also means that sociocultural systems can see more tension than other types of systems.
While Parsons stated that systems gravitated toward equilibrium, systems theory cybernetics is more about how feedback can be used to deal with obstacles, changes, growth and adaptation.
Systems are always vulnerable to threats from their environments. How a system uses the feedback it gets from its environment is a major concern for the systems theorist.
At the same time, threats can come from within the system itself. The processes that enable the system to maintain itself are called morphostasis. By contrast, morphogenesis refers to processes of change. Most systems reflect a state of tension between the two, and develop increasingly complex ways of mediating between them.
Buckley advocates a systems theory that saw tensions as a normal part of sociocultural systems (which are of great interest to him), and were in fact integral to the system's imperative to process feedback. His approach is dynamic, in that it emphasizes variety and change within the system. It also addresses the processes of transmission and spread of energy and information. Furthermore, it includes individual and interpersonal levels of analysis.
Building somewhat on the ideas of Mead, Buckley states that action starts with an environmental signal to a social actor. This signal might be complicated by the presence of noise form the environment—competing information that potentially distracts form or negates the initial signal. Whatever gets through to the actor is termed information, to which the actor must select a response. These responses collectively form systems—which in turn are parts of larger systems.
Buckley's formulations provide a good foundation in the understanding of systems theory. Possibly the best-known systems is Luhmann, who developed developed systems theory in innovative new ways.

Niklas Luhmann

Luhmann acknowledges general systems, cybernetics and cognitive biology in building his arguments. He also acknowledges Parsons, though he feels that Parsons' structural functionalist approach does not adequately deal with two key social processes. The first is reference—the ability of a society or system to refer to itself . Also missing, according to Luhmann, is contingency—the fact that the nature of a system is contingent upon other variables. Thus, states of being that Parsons takes as foregone conclusions are, in Luhmann's view, mere possibilities, contingent upon environmental factors that might shape them to become something else.
One of Luhmann's major points is that the system is always less complex than its environment. That is to say, the environment can always present the system with more obstacles—more possible things to go wrong. And the system has only so many resources for dealing with these environmental complications. Systems need both supplies and people to process them; any number of outside forces can impact the nature or availability of these.
To deal with the environment, the system must simplify—it must select which aspects of the environment to process or ignore. This is fundamentally a matter of contingency, as different selections could have been made. Whatever the selection process, there is the presence of risk. Something in the environment not attended to could make something within the system go wrong.
To further deal with the environment, the system will inevitably develop subsystems. For example,a company might have a manufacturing division and a sales division, because if everyone tried to everything things would get too complex. Yet the two divisions are interrelated, even as they are separate; how much is manufactured depends on how much is sold, and vice-versa.
Borrowing from biology, Luhmann addressed many of these considerations to advance the concept of autopoietic systems. According to Luhmann, social systems of virtually every permutation can exhibit autopoiesis—which consists of four major characteristics. First, the system produces the elements that comprise it. For example, an economic system consists of the money it produces.
These systems are also self-organizing, in that they determine their own internal structures and boundaries. While the system itself finally decides here, it is of course influenced in its decisions by environmental factors. For example, if the environment seems initially hostile to the system, it might decide to organize itself in ways that combat this hostility, and in the meantime create a boundary structure that protects it from this hostility.
Codes, to Luhmann, are the communication choices that symbolically separate the system from its environment. Since systems, in his view, are close,d this means that codes signify a limitation of communicative possibilities within the system. The codes of one system must, by definition then, be different from the codes in another system; otherwise, they would be the same system.
These autopoietic systems also are self-referential, which means that they not only create their basic elements but constantly refer to themselves. For example, participants in the legal system constantly cite laws and cases that refer directly to the legal system itself.
Finally, Luhmann would differ from Buckley and other systems theorists, in that he feels that all systems are essentially closed. He noted that systems were, after all, selective in what they responded to in their environments, and so in the final analysis they acted independently of their environments. For example, public demonstrations about a defendant's innocence or guilt often have no effect on a jury's verdict—the processing of information inside the courtroom is separate from the processing of information in the public arena.
Along these same lines, Lehman believes that a system is separate from the individual—that the very job titles and so on that people take on signal a departure from their individuality. Thus, for Luhmann, individuals are not really parts of the systems they participate in. Rather, individuals themselves always represent the environment—and so represent risks and threats. The individual cannot and does not "exist" within the closed system; only the job title can and does. So here again, Luhmann argues that all autopoietic systems are closed.

That individuals are not part of the system relates to what Luhmann calls a psychic system. This refers to those part of the individual that are secret or unknown to the social system, and so are part of the environment—and thus might disrupt the social system. In this way, an individual's consciousness is in fact part of a system of sorts—but these psychic systems are separate from the social systems of society.
However, psychic and social systems evolve concurrently, Each is necessary to other's environment. What goes into the psychic system is, to some extent, what the social system does not select. Therefore, in turn, the continuance of the psychic system means the continuance of the social system.
Furthermore, both systems are dependent upon meanings. From Luhmann's perspective, "meaning" is largely a matter of the selective choices a system makes—so again the matter goes back to contingency. Something could have meant something else, but we decided to have it mean what it did. Actions only mean something to the exeunt that selectivity was involved; when one cannot chose from alternate possibilities, what one does has virtually no meaning. Also, when choices are unexpected, their meaning can be heightened.
However, the source of meaning sis different for psychic systems. In social systems, meanings stem from communication; in psychic systems, it is a matter of the individual's consciousness . This consciousness, of course, can be influenced by the social systems. But in the final analysis, both social systems and psychic systems are–once again—closed. Selections are made, finally, independent of the environment.
These tensions between the individual and the social system generate what Luhmann terms double contingency. A given communication struggles to conveyed not only the basis of its content, but on how it is received. In this way, the receiver and the communicator need each other. The receiver needs to receive communication, but the communicator needs the communication to be adequately received. Given the essential closed nature of systems that Luhmann advocates—and the many threats from the environment thereof—the possibility of communication becomes a dubious one. Yet in their closed way, systems select a relatively simple range of communication possibility for the various situations the it confronts. Since each episode of communication is part of a larger social system, previous selections can impact upon present or future ones.
Luhmann further discusses systems from the standpoint of evolution. He believes that systems engage in several forms of differentiation in order to adapt to their environments. Segmentary differentiation refers to the ways in which a system will divide itself on the basis of selective responses to the environment.Stratificatory differentiation means the ways in which the system will differentiate into a hierarchy. There is also center-periphery differentiation, which provides linkage between segmentary and stratificatory differentiation. For example, both the republican and democratic parties have central committees—a core membership as opposed to the peripheral, general membership.
Luhmann feels that the most complex form of differentiation is functional differentiation. He states that in modern societies, this is the most common form of differentiation, for it is based more directly on the perceived needs and goals of the system. It therefore is more flexible than other forms of differentiation, as it is less inclined to be differentiation for differentiation's sake. Functional differentiation often leads to complexity. And this complexity can both strengthen and weaken a system. It can make it better able to cope with the environment, but more components also means greater likelihood of something in the system going wrong. And in functional differentiation, complexity is carried out to in fact serve specific functions.
A major paradox of functional differentiation is that while it sets in motion complex systems to deal with specific problems in the environment, it also means that there is no mechanism in place to deal with society as whole. A larger social problem can continue, despite effort to resolve it, because any system, after all, is less complex than the environment. Complex systems, in their effort to deal with as many problems as possible, become too piecemeal and specific to deal with everything.
Given all these considerations, true knowledge might seem all but impossible in any system, since it is ultimately selective and closed. But luhmann offers up a sociology of knowledge in which sociologists are able to comment on and observe the direct processes of systems by noting how changes in semantics, or meanings, reflect changes in the social order. In this way, sociology can sidestep some of the automatic limitations of being a closed system itself.
Luhammnn's contributions to systems theory have been widely regarded for bringing it more rigor. But Luhmann has also been criticized for not avoiding some of the perceived weaknesses inherent in a systems approach. Some feel that Luhmann errs in not giving priority to some systems over others, in assuming differentiation when such is not the only strategy for adaptation, and in not adequately describing how systems relate to each other. At the most basic level, Luhmann has been criticized for assuming that the closed character of systems is inevitable, rather than something to be overcome. Nonetheless, he remains an important voice in social theory.

Peter Berger's The Homeless Mind thesis(taking his work as a whole)

For Peter Berger the sociologist , religion has always been a human construction, a social universe of meaning projecting a sacred cosmos. Because the supernatural is a realm set against the reality of every day life and is often seen to surround it, it can only be communicated by sacredness through religions' collective symbolisations. Sacredness is a quality of power realised in experience and objects of life. So religion is constructed to be a canopy of sacred objects and meanings, a universe of built meaning to reflect collective and therefore project itself right into the personal beliefs of the individual and human groups. Thus there is a relationship between institutions, the forms of work and life, and both social and inner meaning.
This sacred canopy is maintained by the social order, and in turn makes the objective social order subjectively legitimated to every thinking individual. The objective institutions of society are placed into history and the very drama of unfolding life, and that history reflects the playing out of divine reality. The Church, of course, is the key institution uniting the supernatural and the progress of the world.
Furthermore, the subjective impact of this construction and reflection is in the explanation of events of significance, thus explaining the perceived good and bad of life within that order. It pervades every area of life right down to the very personal, so that sexual relationships reflect the divine to human relationship, and health and wellbeing reflect the condition of the individual in relation to the divine will.
It is a very thorough, united and uniting ideological system with sacred and supernatural support, and through modernity it has been crumbling away into a shower of parts.
Modernity and pluralism have successively reduced religion to a private sphere. In the socio-economic sphere the change to bureaucractic, rational and technical modes of organisation and therefore ordinary practical-based thinking has undermined the social plausibility of the sacred. There has been a deinstitutionalisation of meaning (due to bureaucracy running on rational, technical grounds) and therefore religion.
Secularisation, that general area of consciousness once inhabited by the sacred canopy, is in a sense a by-product of choice, and secularisation also works at the level of the subjective consciousness. Secularisation is also the product of the Judaeo-Christian tradition itself, that Judaism and Christianity are this worldly and rooted in history and this location in this world (Christ was fully human) makes Christianity its own gravedigger (the Sacred Canopy, 1967, 129). Art, philosophy, literature and science move away from the domination of the agenda of the sacred. Secularisation is the way people ordinarily think day to day in contemporary times, as opposed to how they ordinarily thought in previous times.
A plurality of meanings replaces one general meaning and these often compete. This, in the Durkheimian sense, is seen as instability replacing stability, and thus Berger's use of the title "The Homeless Mind" (1974). This has deep social and pyschological consequences in terms of theodicy, in that what once could be explained in terms of life and death are now bereft of general explanation. We are seen to live in a meaningless state, and human life is less easy to bear. Secular ideological approaches have been nowhere near as successful in explaining a meaningfulness of personal events and place in the universe as the religions have been. Anxiety increases because anomie cannot any longer be resolved in a sacred order.
There is no general way back to rebuilding the sacred canopy. The ecumenical response after the growth of many denominations is an institutional rationalisation in the face of decline, but that is all they can do and they cannot rebuild that sacred canopy that once existed.
Another key response to modernity has been accommodations to it with changing theologies. They nip and tuck their dogmas and their understanding of dogmas to fit with modern plausibility, and yet it has been a losing battle of negotiation. Theology is therefore itself part of the sociology of knowledge - a change in ideas and understanding in response to social change. Some religious activists have reverted to traditionalisms of an alternative but removed counter-universe of meaning, while others as radicals absorbed the pluralist of the world and the secularisation of understanding. The least successful are the mid-way liberals with give and take. At the core of this shift is the loss of religion's plausibility structures - that institutions are no longer able to deliver meaning as they once did and so now we no longer believe in general these doctrines as given, the world view of causalities that they represent. It takes a huge sectarian effort to believe religious doctrines once taken for granted due to their loss of place.
Of course religious beliefs do not vanish. What is at stake is their de-legitimisation, the decline of general religious plausibility structures. However, within the generality of pluralism, and the competition of meanings, there is space for small resurgences of religion. Personal religion may be highly effective, but highly sectarian too.
In terms of sociology the Berger approach pursues a humanistic approach against an over emphasis on general structures and determinism, whilst taking structures into the approach. Like Weber, meaning at a subjective is given strong place in the context of bringing both macro and micro approaches together. Humankind has its place in society and the meaning of society is subjectively placed in humankind's consciousness. The references to culture, knowledge, meaning, and consciousness draw upon phenomenology and the very way we communicated and mean. Whilst changes in modernity can be discussed generally, Berger, the Lutheran, is interested in religion and its changes and responses to social change and sees religion contributing to social change through its history as well as being changed by broader forces.

Homelessness of the Mind

We want to link identities, consciousness and social relationships and this the Homeless Mind thesis tries to do. This approach encounters structuralism (a hint of Frankfurt School Marxism - a bit like the left idealism studied in criminology) and symbolic interactionism and phenomenology, and goes something like this...
Primary carriers of meaning are the institutions which form from the economic and social base of society. Market forces, privatised and anomic social relations, work identities separated from other identities, and the anonymity of bureaucracy. Secondary carriers are urbanism and the mass media, mass education, and areas of culture and arts transmitting ideas. This leads to existentialist doubt. This has echoes of the Frankfurt School of hegemonic Marxism and structuralism. But the self looks to society...
Berger and Kellner (1974) says we live in a framework of symbols and these convey meaning, and their pattern conveys overall meaning. In other words, the individual mind interacts with society on a sybolic interface.
In the past the main overarching symbol system was religious, giving one symbolic world, affecting consciousness, but now the overarching one symbolic world has been replaced by plurality of meanings. Because life has become segmented as in the life of the city, with bureaucracy and technology - we get anonymity and privacy and the allowing of a plurality of lifestyles. However, the city norms are not confined to cities - pluralism is everywhere. Thus a once sense of encountering the same home world in every situation of life has gone. We now have a segmented life carrying different meanings as we encounter each segment.
It is possible to imagine yourself having different biographies and offering a different identity of yourself to each segment. This gives freedom, but also frustration. It then becomes up to you to make and create your own meaning through your life plan. Who am I becomes what you do through space and time. It is uncertain and may not be achievable. In the old world of overarching meaning you were given your identity, but in the modern world you get a sense of designing yourself, but within the social situations in which you find and move yourself. So it is expnsive and free, but rootless and anomic. You migrate openly through different social worlds, and use their meanings.
Yet every meaning, because it is differentiated, is relativised. Nothing has absolute truth. This means the institutionl order as a whole no longer pins together as it did, and it itself is relativised. Because you cannot locate yourself in the whole objective order, as once possible, you sufer identity crises. But as you migrate you must reflect. It is not a given order, there is choice and reflection, requiring decisions and plans. So individualism is the key - what you choose is different from what they choose.
Religion which once produced an overarching view of reality - a cosmos - and was its principle project is now privatised. Because of this breaking down, there is a secularising effect. The generality is religionless - religion is now diffused. Religion has lost its quantity of certainty, faith is made more difficult, religion escapes increasingly from the public sphere and with the loss of metaphysics we all feel more homeless.

Justin's Notes on Mead and Goffman

Mead and Symbolic
Interactionism
George Herbert Mead

Symbolic interactionism was advanced as a major sociological perspective largely through the writings of Mead. He brought rigorous substance to this emergent micro-level analysis.
To the symbolic interactionist, "society" is the sum total of the countless daily interactions that people engage in. To some extent, Simmel in particular already noted this. But unlike Simmel, the symbolic interactionists developed a purely micro analysis. Moreover, they emphasized different ideas than Simmel. Instead of the dialectics of objective culture, symbolic interactionism begins with a more basic analysis. From this perspective,whether society was functional or unequal or bureaucratic or suffering the tragedy of culture, we must first see how people actually interacted with each other. Without this, say the symbolic interactionists, there is no real "proof" of functionality or conflict, and so on.
Furthermore, the basic unit of analysis was not just interaction, but symbolic interaction. A symbol is something that stands for something else. For example, language provides symbols in the form of words—and language is in fact featured in the symbolic interactionist perspective.
Symbols can be differentiated from signs, in that a sign is something that stands for itself. For example,we might say that a kiss is generally a sign of affection; the gesture and the meaning of the gesture are self-contained. However, giving someone a heart-shaped box of candy might be seen as a symbol of affection. A heart-shaped box of candy has a symbolic meaning that has been socially created. For that matter, actually saying that you like this person is a symbolic gesture, inn the the words themselves are utterances that stand for certain concepts and objects.
As the name would suggest, symbolic interactionism features symbols much more than signs. For symbols involve complex social systems of meaning, while signs are simpler, automatic responses that are common to other species besides humans.
Scholars such as Mead look to see how social meanings and values, as well as social structure and patterns, are communicated symbolically. The symbol might be in the form of the spoken or written word—whether in everyday interactions, or in the arts or media. But it also might involve body language, clothing, the use of color, traffic signals, religious symbols . . . the list is virtually endless.
Mead did not "invent" symbolic interactionism. It was influenced by other schools of thought, such as pragmatism (which saw the social world as an ongoing creation) and behaviorism (which studies only observable behavior, and looks at how people and animals respond to stimuli).
Additionally, the term, "symbolic interactionism," was first coined by another scholar, Herbert Blumer. The so-called Chicago school of symbolic interactionism was largely developed by Blumer out of the University of Chicago. Blumer advocated a relatively "soft" approach to sociology. He felt there should be as little generalizing as possible, and that each interaction must be given its own field study as a unique event. Blumer was highly critical of sociology that looked only to the macro for an understanding of society.
Eventually, the Chicago school had a rival in the so-called Iowa school. Manford Kuhn (out of the University of Iowa) popularized the notion that symbolic interactionism could be used to make general hypothetical predictions. Kuhn began using symbolic interactionism to generate and interpret quantitative, statistical data. Today, symbolic interactionism is used in both qualitative and quantitative studies.
Throughout all these upheavals, Mead has remained a vital force in sociology. At the most basic level, his analysis involves what he termed the act. To Mead, this meant the basic momentum toward action—what makes us decide to do something, and then doing it.
The act consists of four stages. First there is impulse, in which the social actor is stimulated, and feels the need to respond to this stimulus—and so the situation is experienced as a problem to be resolved. The stimulation might arise from internal factors within the self, or from the outside environment.
At the next stage, there is perception of the stimuli. This involves the five senses, as well as mental images associated with the stimuli. Selectivity plays a role. We decide which aspects of the stimuli to address, what object(s) relates to it—and often even which stimulus to address in the first place, given that social actors often are confronted with more than one stimulus at a time.

Manipulation happens next, at which time we manipulate the object we associate with the stimulus, or—often more likely—we do something in regard to the object. Finally, there is consummation, in which we complete the action that we think will satisfy the impulse we originally experienced.
When two people engage in an act together, it becomes a social act. And gestures are what make a social act happen. Gestures can be verbal or nonverbal; in either case, they are what one person uses to signal a stimuli to another person—how interactions happen.
Humans are not the only species to use gestures, or engage in social acts. However, Mead felt that humans did have a unique ability to make a specific kind of gesture called a significant symbol. These are gestures that generally are understood by both the person making the gesture, and the person who is receiving it. Significant symbols can be nonverbal. However, they are more likely to be verbal, because there is a greater likelihood that we will consciously control our speech than our body movements, especially when engulfed in deep thought or emotion.
Significant symbols are what make real human communication possible—as well as human thought, according to Mead. They also are what make symbolic interactions possible, because there are mutually-understood symbolic meanings being exchanged. The true meaning of the symbol is gleaned not merely from the gesture itself, but by the subsequent action it inspires.
These symbolic meanings can and do change over time. For example, the English language is not exactly the same as it was a hundred years ago; there are new words, and new meanings for older words. But the English language stays essentially the same form one day to the next; we do not have to learn an entirely new language each day. Thus, our significant symbols are both constant and changing, They are constant enough for us to engage in agreed-upon meanings, yet also flexible enough to change as needed. For these symbolic meanings are, after all, created by social actors themselves.
Mead places considerable emphasis upon the mental processes involved in creating, maintaining, and changing our cannon of significant symbols. He looks at these processes from a sociological perspective. For example, intelligence, in Mead's view, refers to a one's ability to adjust to the circumstances of one's environment. This often involves a delayed response—one must contemplate what to do. For humans, this means referring to one's understanding of significant symbols, to find an appropriate strategy or action.
Similarly, Mead is interested in consciousness from the standpoint of the objective, outer world: How the environment informs human consciousness. Interaction is the means by which thoughts are created and developed. Our ideas are seen as emerging in a social venue, and not in a state of isolation. Covert behavior refers to this pure thought process of sorting through symbolic meanings, while overt behavior is the observable behavior that emerges from thought.
The mind itself is defined in terms of a social process—a sense of shared meanings with others. For Mead, it is not just that the mind harbors information that occurs in the social world. Rather, he states that the social world has actually created the mind itself. How it organizes information, and which information it keeps, stems from how we are shaped within society. For example, two people from entirely different societies might notice two different aspects of a given situation, or interpret the same one differently. Or perhaps they do not even have a similar point of reference, and one of them never even knew that such an event was possible.
The self, in Mead's view, stands for the ability to see oneself as both subject and object. In Mead's view, this again was uniquely human. We both spontaneously experience the world, and we objectively organize or judge the experience in our minds. For we have the ability to be reflexive—to see ourselves as others do. And so the self is also a social process. Both the interaction itself, and our points of reference on it, are located in the social world.
This ability to see ourselves objectively is developed through our social experiences. Society, in effect, give birth the self. Specifically, Mead explores how childhood socialization informs the development of the self. He postulated that there were two basic stages of training in symbolic meanings. The play stage involves learning to take the attitude of a particularized other—a specific person. This might be someone we know, such as a family member, or someone (real or fictional) we have heard about through a story or other media. Thus, younger children play at being "Mommy/Daddy" or "Barbi" or "Captain Kirk." They strive to take on the perspective of that persona. From this, they are able to learn, for example, that "Mommy" does not like it if they sneak a cookie before dinner.
Older children engage in the game stage, at which point a full self starts to be developed. At the game stage, children do not simply "Play," but learn specific games, with rules to be followed. This gives children a sense of the generalized other. They learn that if you play baseball, three strikes means you are out, no matter who you are. The generalized other means that children absorb not only "Mommy's" attitude, but the collective attitudes of society—one develops a self and a consciousness and a mind. One sees oneself as a participant in society, engaging in the shared significant meanings of others.
Mead added another dimension to this discussion of the self, and posited that there was both an "I" and a "me" within each person. The "I' spontaneously acted in society. To some extent, the "I" cannot be fully contained, because it is always acting and reacting. The "I" makes social change possible, and gives dynamism to Mead's model.
The "me" is, in effect, the internalized generalized other—the assortment of attitudes we collect and store as social actors. The "me" conforms to society, and is better-known to people, because it is the aspect of ourselves we feel we are "supposed to" convey. For example, at a job interview, or meeting our in-laws for the first time, we might especially strive to feature the "me," and control the "I" as best we can. The "me" also comments on and criticizes the "I." For in Mead's view self-criticism is really social criticism. What we do not like about ourselves stems from lessons we have learned in society. The "me" is in, effect, an expression of society as a whole.
But society, in Mead's view, is not frozen in time. Rather, it is a process, ever-unfolding as meanings are exchanged. Social institutions are collective and recognizable habits or responses in society. In Mead's view, these institutions could be and often were oppressive to the individual. But Mead maintained that they did not have to be. Since our interactions were what made up society, our oppressive institutions could change.
Nonetheless, some critics feel that Mead's sociology would be more satisfying if there was more emphasis on the macro-level order. Symbolic interactionism itself is sometimes criticized for not really being a theory, in that was not originally offered in terms of propositions. For example, in Marxism it is postulated that the more capitalism seeks profits, the more it will lead to its undoing. But there were not these equivalent kind of predictions made in symbolic interactionism. Therefore, some people maintain it is really more of a general framework for looking at society than a theory per se.
Essentially, symbolic interactionists sought flight away from the general, macro-level analysis of other scholars. And this is both what some people appreciate about symbolic interactionism, and what some other people do not appreciate about it.
In more recent decades, efforts have been made to offer up a form of symbolic interactionism that more explicitly emphasizes the integration of the macro with the micro.
For example, the contemporary theorist Sheldon Stryker advances the concept of role making, through which social actors can make large-scale social changes by changing how they perform their roles. Norman K. Denzin emphasizes cultural studies within an interactionists framework—the ways in which the macro cultural environment influences and is influenced by micro-level developments.
Furthermore, some authors have asserted that Mead did indeed adequately address the macro in discussing (for example) the generalized other, or the prominence of society in concepts such as the "me."
In any event, several major perspectives emerged out of this interactionist tradition. One of these models was called dramaturgy, as advanced through the efforts of Erving Goffman.

Goffman and Dramaturgy

Dramaturgy uses metaphors from the world of theater to analyze the roles we play as social actors.

Erving Goffman

Goffman expanded upon symbolic interactionism, including Mead's concept of the "I" and the "me" to discuss the tensions that confront the social actor in trying to live upto the expectations of society when enacting the various roles expected of him or her. For example, someone might enact the roles of bank vice-president, mother, daughter, Roman Catholic, and therapy patient, all within a single day.
Like other theorists, Goffman discusses individuals as actors—he looks at symbolic interactions from the standpoint of the role performances being given. From Goffman's perspective, we are not only exchanging significant symbols, but we are doing so within the confines of a specific role.
This dramaturgical perspective notes that our various role performances are vulnerable to interruption. Just like we can walk out of a theater if the performance on the stage is not convincing (or in today's world, change the channel on the TV), so can our real-life audience dismiss our performance(s) as unconvincing. For example, if a bank teller is doing a very poor job of counting out your money, you might decide that he is not convincing you he is a bank teller. At that point, you might "interrupt" his performance by asking to speak to his supervisor.
But most of the time, most of us seem to give convincing performances; most of us manage to become versatile social actors. Or in any case, the audience normally is not inclined to interrupt our performances. People often sit through plays or movies they do not enjoy because they paid to see it, or maybe it was a lot of bother to find a parking place outside the theater. Similarly, that bank teller (or whomever) will have to do a very poor job for most of us to interrupt his performance. We want to be convinced by it, because it is easier that way.
In fact , Goffman stated the performers and audiences actually are a team, mutually involved in giving a performance validation. They are a secret society of sorts, sharing an often-unspoken conspiracy for the performance at hand be completed uninterrupted.
One of Goffman's major themes is the presentation of self. For Goffman, we have a "self" to the extent that we present some sort of role to others. Like other symbolic integrationists, Goffman sees the self as located within the social act. However, unlike Mead, he did not emphasize what the interaction might have meant to the social actor—how it might have altered his sense of significant symbols. Instead, Goffman was concerned with how convincing the performance was to one's audience or co-interactor.
On the stage or in a movie, someone can cry in a scene by thinking of something sad and really crying; or the actor might simply put drops in her eyes to make them water. In either case, what matters most is if the audience believes she is crying. Similarly, Goffman asserted that whether we believed in our social roles mattered far less than if we were convincing in them.
The extent to which we separate ourselves from a role we are performing is called role distance. Sometimes, the audience does not even notice role distance on the part of the actor; at other times, a certain lack of commitment to the role comes through. For example, a bank teller yawns while counting a customer's money. The nature of role distance can sometimes be related to social status. For example, someone who thinks a certain task is beneath his or her dignity might execute it in a lackluster way.
Another important dimension regarding presentation of self is impression management. This refers to the way we monitor our performances to guard against being interrupted. If we say or do something that seems inappropriate to the performance, we might then try to say or do something else that quickly realigns it.
One way we keep the audience from questioning our performances is through mystification. This refers to the way we often create social distance between ourselves and the audience in order to give a more impressive performance The audience, after all, is willing to believe that someone really is a bank teller or police officer or nurse, and so it is usually will accept or welcome this element of distance. It helps to communicate a sense that there is every aspect of the actor is committed to the role.
Yet at the same time, we often try to convey a sense of closeness to our audiences. Again, this is similar to a performer on the stage who might want the people in the audience to think they are his or her "friends." And so we act that our bank customers or the persona interviewing us for a job is closer to us than any of these people actually are.
Building on the metaphors of the the dramatic stage, Goffman made a distinction between front stage and back stage. Performances transpire in the realm of the front stage. There is a setting for the performance—for example, a bank for a bank teller, or an office for a job interview. There is also one's personal front—the tools or props the actor needs to give the performance. These objects generally are in keeping with what the audience would expect from the performance at hand.
Actors on a stage do not want to let the audience know how many weeks they spent rehearsing; they simply want to give a good performance. Similarly, we often hide certain details from the audience while we are front stage. We usually do not reveal to the audience all the preparation, hardship or mistakes we may have had to endure to give the performance at hand. At the same time, we might conceal pleasures or indulgences that we engaged in prior to the performance—whether recently or in the distant past.
The actor also employs a certain appearance and manner. By appearance, Goffman is referring to items (such as clothing) that signal the actor's social status. Manner cues in the audience as to what to expect from the performance—behaving calmly verses harried, happy verses sad or angry, and so on.
In contrast to the front stage, the back stage is a domain in which information suppressed in the front stage is let out into the open. The audience members are assumed to not have access to the back stage area. Impression management is challenged when information that is supposed to be available only in the back stage somehow becomes known in the front stage. This can happen when audience members unexpectedly enter into the back stage. For example, someone calls a friend after a job interview to complain about the personnel worker who did the interview—and that worker overhears the phone call.
Goffman believes that a given space can switch from front stage to back stage, depending on the context of the moment, Also, a space can simply be outside— neither front stage nor backstage, but a place where there are no actions relevant to the role performance.
Social performances can be recognized and categorized for their familiarity —e.g., she is acting "like" a doctor, he is acting "like" a friend. In Goffman's terms, there are socially created frames that signal what is expected of the social actor(s) in a given situation. For example, if someone complains of a serious misfortune at a party, the tone of the party might become more somber—the social actors at hand will switch from one frame to another.
These frames become fairly standardized in society; people are expected to abide by them. At the same time, though, actors might imbue a frame with their own mood, belief or manner of performing. Thus, two different bank tellers will give similar—but not identical—performances.
Another factor that can affect role performance is stigma. When there is a gap between what is expected of a social actor and the actual performance that is given, the actor will be stigmatized accordingly. For example, if young women are "supposed to" have a certain general appearance, and a young woman looks some other way, she will be stigmatized. Stigma takes two general forms. Discredited stigma refers to situations in which the actor presumes that the audience is aware of how he or she deviates from what is expected. A discreditable stigma is one that is known to the actor but not the audience. Both forms of stigma can affect role performance—perhaps even cause the performance to cease altogether.
Many people have found Goffman's analysis of social roles to be highly intriguing and insightful. Some, however, are disturbed by what they feel to be his overly-cynical outlook—that the emphasis is on giving a performance, as opposed to uncovering what makes people commit to something meaningful.
Another major school of thought examines micro-level interactions, and in ways that deviate from Goffman or Mead.

Interactionism (Method and Theory)

Introduction

The main purpose of these Notes is to provide a basic overview of different sociological perspectives. Each set of notes is organised around three basic themes:

1. A brief overview of the perspective.

2. An outline of the “basic principles” on which each perspective is based.

3. A brief evaluation of the perspective.

These Notes are, therefore, intended to serve as a general introduction to different perspectives, although they may also be used as revision notes.

Interactionist Perspectives: (Social Action Theory)

The Interactionist perspective is a generic (or "family") name that is normally given to a group of sociological perspectives that consists of three variations, namely:

• Phenomenology.
• Symbolic Interaction.
• Ethnomethodology.

Not all textbooks refer to this group of theoretical ideas as Interactionism - some refer to them as phenomenological theories or Social Action theories – but for A-level examination purposes none of the major exam boards expect students to have detailed knowledge of each “sub-perspective”; the most they require is a general knowledge and understanding of “Interactionist-type Sociology”.

Whatever the specific terminology it is evident that the above perspectives refer to a specific way of looking at and explaining the social world - one that is quite different to both Functionalist and Conflict perspectives.

In general, Interactionist perspectives tend to concentrate upon relatively small-scale levels of social interaction (between individuals, small social groups and so forth) and, for this reason, they are sometimes referred-to as a micro level of sociological analysis.

The basic ideas that Interactionist sociologists have in common (and which make them different in many respects to macro perspectives like Functionalism and Marxist Conflict theories) can be summarised as follows:

They focus upon the way in which individuals (or "social actors" as Interactionists like to call them) consciously act - rather than simply react to social stimulation.

The way in which different social actors interpret the behaviour of others is significant as a means of understanding the way in which the world is socially constructed.

This social construction of the world is focused upon the meanings people give to behaviour and the way in which they interpret the meaning of behaviour.


A simple example here might be if we were standing at some traffic lights waiting to cross the road. If we see a car go through a red traffic signal we may interpret that behaviour as "wrong" (because it is dangerous) and / or "illegal" (because it breaks the law). If, however, the car that races through a red light has a flashing blue light and a wailing siren we may interpret that behaviour as "understandable", given that we assume the police officers in the car have a very good reason for acting both dangerously and illegally.

This example also illustrates something about the idea of "meanings" in Interactionist thought, since there is no very clear relationship between a "red light" and the action "stop"; it's only because we have been socialised to make an association that a red light actually means stop to us. If you imagine, for example, someone from a society where cars do not exist, they would not associate red traffic lights with "stop" or "it's dangerous to cross the road when the light is green" because that symbolic association between the two things would not be a part of what Interactionists call their "symbolic system (or universe) of meaning".

The social context within which people interact is significant for both their interpretation of the behaviour of others and the way in which they choose to behave at any given time.

We can see the relationship between the social context in which interaction takes place and the ability of people to (theoretically at least) behave in any way imaginable by examining two concepts developed by the Symbolic Interactionist George Herbert Mead (see "Mind, Self and Society", 1933).

Mead argued that whilst we are each conscious, thinking, individuals, the way in which we choose to behave is conditioned by the social context of that behaviour. In this, he said that our behaviour as individuals is conditioned by two aspects of our self-awareness (that is, the ability to "see ourselves" as others see us).

a. The "I" aspect which largely consists of spontaneous actions and

b. The "Me" aspect which consists of an awareness of how other people expect us to behave at any given moment.

The "I" and the "Me" are parallel parts of what Mead called "The Self" and it is the ability of human beings to develop a "self-concept" that makes us different to most animals.

In animals, for example, the “I” is dominant (to the almost total exclusion of the “Me” in most animals). This means, in effect, that most animal behaviour is instinct-based rather than socially-constructed.

In humans, on the other hand, the reverse is true. The “Me” is dominant to the almost total exclusion of the “I”. This means, in effect, that most human behaviour is socially-constructed rather than instinct-based.







If we look at an example of the "I" and the "Me" these points should become a little clearer.

If someone accidentally puts their hand into a fire, the "I" aspect of the Self is expressed by such things as feeling pain, pulling your hand out of the flames quickly and so forth.

The "Me" aspect of the Self, however, will condition how the person who has burnt their hand will react.

This reaction will be conditioned by such things as:

1. Who we are (social factors such as gender, age and so forth).

2. Where we are (at home, in public and so forth).

3. Who we are with (our family, friends, people we don't know...).

Thus, if you are a young child, your reaction to being burnt may be to cry. If, on the other hand, you are a young man, you may feel that crying is not a socially-acceptable reaction - so you may swear very loudly instead. Swearing loudly may be acceptable if you are at home by yourself - or with someone who accepts the fact that you swear on occasions - but may not be acceptable if, for example, you are fixing someone's fire as part of your job.

Similarly, if you had been messing around with a group of friends when you burnt your hand, their reaction to your accident may be to laugh and make fun of your pain. Laughter would not be an appropriate reaction if it was your child that had burnt their hand...

As you may imagine, the list of possible responses to the act of "burning yourself" is many and varied and each will depend upon who you are and the social context in which the act takes place.

This, interestingly enough, also tells us something about the way in which Interactionists view the possibility of our being able, as sociologists, to predict people's behaviour. This, if you think about it, is going to be extremely difficult - if not impossible - because behaviour is not, according to Interactionists, a simple response to some form of external stimulation. In effect, people will react differently to the same social stimulation depending upon the circumstances in which the act takes place.

Interactionists reject the idea that society has an objective existence that is separate from the people who, through their everyday relationships, create a sense of living in a society. Society, in this respect, is seen as an "elaborate fiction" that we create in order to help us make sense of the structure of our social relationships.






In order to "make sense" of the confusing world that we experience on a daily basis, Interactionists argue that we use a process of categorisation. That is, as we interact we (consciously and unconsciously) categorise similar experiences (or phenomena) in some way. In this respect, we create categories of people based around our perception of them as, for example:

Male or female.
Young or old.
Employer / employee.
Traffic warden / police woman.
Husband / wife.

Each category of related phenomena is like a little box that we hold inside our mind and, for our convenience, each little box has:

a. A name or label that identifies it for us (for example, the label "mother").

b. A set of social characteristics inside. That is, a set of related ideas that we associate with the label on the box.

Thus, when someone we meet reveals one of their social labels to us ("I'm a mother") we mentally "open the box" that contains our store of knowledge about "motherhood".

This might include objective (factual) information (a mother is someone who has given birth to a child) as well as subjective (based upon opinion) information (I love my mother so all children love their mothers; a mother has a duty to look after her children and so forth).

By categorising the social world in this way we give it the appearance of order and regularity, since when we meet people we are able to interact with them on the basis of the "general things that we know about this type of person".

When we meet a police officer, for example, we might give them an exaggerated respect because we realise that they have the power to arrest us...



















Basic Principles.

The Interactionist perspective is usually considered to consist of three related "sub- perspectives" (Phenomenology, Symbolic Interaction and Ethnomethodology). Only a basic understanding of the overall perspective is required. You are not expected to have a detailed knowledge and understanding of each of these sub-perspectives.

1. Human behaviour is a product of the way we interpret the social world on a daily basis. The social world is created and recreated by people going about their lives.

2. The way in which people interpret and give meaning to the behaviour of others is a significant factor in the understanding of the social world.

3. "Society" is seen as an "elaborate fiction" that we create in order to help us to make sense of the bewildering range of behaviour that we experience on a daily basis. "Society" does not have an objective existence, as such, since it is experienced subjectively by people.

4. For Mead, social life consists of people interacting (that is, behaving with reference to each other - taking note of the way people behave towards each other), setting- up mutual expectations - or norms - and then acting with reference to these norms.

5. The concept of categorisation is important because people classify various similar phenomena in their daily lives in order to make sense of these phenomena.

6. The process of labelling (giving names to the phenomena we classify) is significant because the labels we create (mother, criminal, insane and the like) help us to define (or stereotype) the nature of the social categories we create. In modern societies people tend to behave towards each other on the basis of the labels that each person attracts from others.

7. Some labels are termed "master labels" because they are so powerful they condition every aspect of our behaviour towards the person so labelled. Examples of master labels in our society might be: Criminal, homosexual, heterosexual, mad and so forth. The labels we attract (either through choice (achievement) or through being given them (ascription)) are important because people's knowledge of a label serves to unlock the assumptions we hold about particular social categories. This conditions the way in which we feel it is appropriate to behave towards a person.

8. For Interactionists, social order is:

a. Ultimately a product of our mind (we make ourselves believe that the social world has order and predictability and, by so doing, help to convince each other by our actions that this is indeed the case).

b. Real only for as long as we are able to individually and collectively maintain this belief. In this respect, for as long as people define a situation as real it will be real in its consequences...

9. All social interaction involves meanings and interpretations and the Interactionist perspective highlights the way in which the social world is actively constructed (rather than passively experienced as some Structuralist perspectives argue) by people going about the process of making sense of the actions of others.

Some General Points of Criticism...

1. Interactionist perspectives have been criticised for their over-emphasis upon "the individual" as the object of sociological study. There tends to be little conception of social structures (other than “structures” being "elaborate fictions" we somehow create and sustain).

2. There is little attempt to explain how the social relationships that we create (especially when we live in very large, very complex, social groups) "reflect back" upon our behaviour to apparently force us into behaving in ways that give us little real choice.

Similarly, Interactionists are criticised for failing to theorise the nature of power relationships in society (where, for example, the origins of power lies in society). While Interactionists tend to talk about power relationships, there is little or not attempt to develop a social theory of the origins of power in the way that Marxists have attempted, for example.

Thus, although Interactionists make frequent reference to the concept of power (in relation to ideas like stereotyping, labelling and so forth), there has been little attempt to try to develop a theory a power (why some individuals / social groups are more powerful than others). This is mainly because they fail to address questions of social structure and how these structures affect individual perceptions, meanings and interpretations.

3. The perspective concentrates too much on the small-scale, relatively trivial, aspects of social life. It tends to immerse itself in the minute details of social existence while ignoring the much bigger picture of life at a society-wide level of analysis. The individual, in this respect, is seen to be too small a level of analysis (just as Structuralists’ are criticised for tending to ignore the role of individual social actors).

4. By concentrating upon individuals and their "common sense", subjective, interpretations, all knowledge about the social world is seen to be fundamentally relative (that is, nothing can ever be wholly true and nothing can ever be wholly false).

This is significant for a sociological understanding of the social world since it effectively holds that sociology is more-or-less a pointless exercise. Statements about the social world made by sociologists can be no more reliable or valid than any statements made by non-sociologists. It also, perhaps more importantly, shows how Interactionist thought can, at least on this level, be linked to post-modernism.

5. Interactionist sociology does not adequately address (or explain) questions of social order and social change. The concepts used by Interactionists are not adequate enough to explain, for example, why societies change.

The above notes were borrowed from the reaadings of Prof. Chris Livesey.

Subok lang!

PAKIKIISA SA KILOS MASA SA HULYO 25
Mensahe ni Prop. Jose Maria Sison
Ika-25 ng Hulyo 2005
Mahal na mga kababayan,
Taos puso akong nakikiisa sa inyong kilos masa sa okasyon ng SONA sa araw na ito. Kalahok ako sa diwa at sa abot ng aking kakayahan. Nanawagan ako sa lahat na lumahok tayo sa ganitong napakahalagang kilos masa.
Natutuwa akong makaalam na matatag ang kapasyahan ng napakaraming partido, organisasyon at indibidwal na paramihin ang bilang ng masang dadalo at pataasin ang antas ng kilusang masa para isulong ang mga pagsisikap na ibagsak ang rehimeng Arroyo.
Malaki ang aking tiwala na magiging matagumpay ang kilos masa ng Hulyo 25. Hindi ito mapipigil ng mga pananakot at panlilinlang na ginagawa ng rehimen. Umaapaw ang galit ng sambayanang Pilipino sa rehimen dahil sa pandaraya sa eleksyon, korupsyon, pagkapapet sa mga imperyalista at kalupitan.
Hindi natin mapahihintulutan na nanatili pa ang pekeng presidente sa kanyang nakaw na pwesto. Kasuklamsuklam na siya ang mag-uulat tungkol sa kalagayan ng bayan.Tiyak na puro kasinungalingan ang kanyang sasabihin. Mag-iimbento ng mga tagumpay. Pagtatakpan ang kanyang mga krimen at muling gagawa ng mga hungkag na pangako.
Ang masang anakpawis (manggagawa, magsasaka, mangingisda at maralitang tagalunsod) at mga panggitnang saray ang siyang pinakamaalam sa kalagayan. Sila ang dumaranas sa hirap ng pagsasamantala at pang-aapi. Dinaranas nila ang kawalang trabaho at hanapbuhay, sadyang wage freeze, pagtaas ng presyo ng mga kalakal at serbisyo, pagbigat ng buwis, pagbagsak
ng halaga ng piso, kakulangan o pagkasira ng infrastructure, public utilities at social services at paglaganap ng kriminalidad.
Lumubha ang pagkabulok ng naghaharing sistema ng mga malaking komprador at asendero dahil sa pagsunod ng rehimeng Arroyo sa mga patakarang "free market" globalization na pataw ng US, IMF, World Bank at WTO. Umalagwa ang de-nationalization, liberalization, privatization at deregulation laban sa bansa, anakpawis at kapaligiran. Lumala ang depisit sa kalakalang panlabas at sa badyet. Umabot ang dambuhalang utang ng bangkaroteng gobyerno sa higit na 6 trilyong piso (kasama ang dayuhang utang na 56 bilyong dolyar). Sa nakaraang taon, 81 per cent ng buwis ang ibinayad sa debt service. Sa taong ito aabot ito sa, 94 per cent.
Dapat malaman ng mga mamamayan kung bakit ang karamihan ng mga empleyado sibil at mga opisyal at tauhan sa militar at pulis ay galit sa rehimeng Arroyo. Ang tunay na halaga ng mga sahod nila ay pabagsak. Ang mga pangakong umento hindi tinutupad. Tinanggalan ng COLA (cost of living allowance) ang 400,000 na guro sa mga paaralang publiko. Abot na sa 50 bilyong piso ang dinaya sa kanila magmula 2001. Sa nakaraang apat na taon din, ipinagkait ng rehimen sa mga retiradong militar at pulis ang pension adjustment at benefits na takda ng batas. Kung gayon, galit na galit ang mga militar at pulis, liban sa ilang loyalista na busog sa pangungurakot.
Dapat panagutin ang buong rehimeng Arroyo. Di dapat mangyari na papalitan lamang ni Noli de Castro si Gloria M. Arroyo. Magkasabwat ang dalawa sa pandaraya sa eleksyon at sa pagpapairal ng mga patakarang laban sa bayan at anakpawis. Dapat tanggalin ang dalawa. Itakwil at ibagsak ang buong rehimeng Arroyo na immoral at illehitimo ang katayuan dahil sa pandaraya sa eleksyon at iba pang krimen sa bayan.
Wasto ang sumusunod na patakaran ng BAYAN: magkaroon ng transitional council na papalit agad sa rehimeng Arroyo. Para buuin ang pansamantalang konsehong ito, dapat gumawa ng asambleya ng bayan ang mga pinakamalaki at pinakaaktibong mga partido at organisasyon. Ang mga delegado sa asambleya ang hahalal sa mga miyembro ng council. Magiging tungkulin ng
council na mamuno sa paggawa ng isang patriyotiko at progresibong programa ng pamamahala at mangasiwa ng panibagong eleksiyon sa loob ng anim na buwan.
Mayroon nang impormal at pleksibleng malawak na nagkakaisang hanay ang ibat ibang Partido, organisasyong pangmasa at mga grupo ng militar at pulis laban sa rehimeng Arroyo. Mabilis na nakakapagbukas daan ang hanay na ito sa pagpupukaw at pagpapakilos sa palaki nang palaking bilang ng masang Pilipino. Itinataguyod ng mga patriyotiko at progresibong
pwersa ang malawak na nagkakaisang hanay subalit may kasarinlan at inisyatiba sila.
Mainam na kung matapos ang pagpapabagsak sa rehimeng Arroyo patuloy ang naturang hanay at may mga kinatawan ng mga patriotiko at progresibong pwersa sa transition council at bagong gobyerno dahil kinakailangan ang malawak at malakas na pambansang pagkakaisa upang harapin at lutasin ang patuloy na krisis at malulubhang problema sa bulok na naghaharing sistema.
Kung walang mga patriotiko at progresibong pwersa sa loob ng bagong gobyerno, hindi makakagawa ang gobyernong ito ng mga makabuluhang reporma sa ekonomiya, lipunan, pulitika, kultura at pakikiugnay sa labas ng bansa. Magiging madaling target muli ng kilusang masa ang isang gobiyerno ng mga sagadsaring papet at reaksiyonaryo. Pero kung may mga mabubuting opisyal at patakaran ng bagong gobiyerno, mas madaling makipag-usap at makipagksundo ito sa National Democratic Front of the Philippines sa pamamagitan ng peace negotiations.
Hangarin ng sambayanang Pilipino na buwagin na ang malakonyal at malapiyudal na naghaharing sistema para itatag ang isang sistema na tunay na malaya sa mga imperyalista, may kasarinlan, may demokrasya, may hustisya sosyal, may lahatang panig na pag-unlad at may patakarang panlabas na nagtataguyod ng kapayapaan at kaunlaran. ###

Take your pick!

Announcement for BSS 3-1 (Updated)

Dear BSS 3-1:

Your reports will start on Friday (July 222, 2005). I decided to narrow down the topics to fourteen entries and therefore each group will handle one batch of topics. This will enable more discussions per sesion. Seen below is the schedule per group. (The groups were assigned on July 15, 2005).


12 July 22, 2005 Social Behaviorism: George Herbert Mead Symbolic Interaction: Charles Horton Cooley/ Robert E. Park Group M: Matt Suzara, Danniel Paras, Jervy Abestillas, Jaybee Onno Garaez

13 July 26, 2005 The Lifeworld: Alfred Schutz/ Phenomenology Group F: Patricia Morales, Ariel Revilla, Jayson Domingo

14 July 29, 2005 Structural Functionalism: Talcott Parsons Group G: James Vir Cenina, JUlie Pearl Aga, Mary Grace Bucio

15 August 2, 2005 Structural Functionalism:Robert Merton Group D: Edward Mozo, Karla Krisanta Narvadez, Rommel Malabanan

16 August 5, 2005 Conflict Theory: Ralf Dahrendorf, Lewis Coser, C Wright Mills Group K Jehnalyn de Jesus, Beverly Siman, Shellave Aguisanda

17 August 9, 2005 General Systems Theory Group G (Cenina, Aga, Bucio)

18 August 12, 2005 MIDTERM EXAMINATION

19 August 16, 2005 Neo Marxian Theory Group H: Hana Fernando, Joy Harkins de Guzman, Joseph Macaranas

20 August 19, 2005 The Juggernaut of Modernity and the Risk Society: Anthony Giddens Group E: Catherine Hita, Clarence Colorina, Joie Manuel

21 August 23, 2005 The McDonaldization of Society: George Ritzer Group I: Crizelle Panaligan, Katherine Kaye Lim, Richelle Miel

22 August 26, 2005 Dramaturgy: Erving Goffman Group J: Reybee Abella, Ronel Golocino, Ara Cristel Agapor

23 August 30, 2005 Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis Group C: Erma Omanito, Desiree Benavidez, Mickey John Bustamante

24 September 2, 2005 Exchange Theory Group L: Katherine Gianan, Maria Concepcion, Palomera, Maria Theresa Consulta, Lorafe Areglado, May Valones, Kristine Joy Henson

25 September 6, 2005 Rational Choice Theory Group L

26 September 9, 2005 Feminist Theory and the Micro Social Order

27 September 13, 2005 Contemporary Integrative Theories: Integrated Exchange Theory Richard Emerson Group N: Joana Cagula, Michael Fermin, Lenie Canela

28 September 16, 2005 Structuration Theory Pierre Bourdieu Group N: (Cagula, Fermin, Canela)

29 September 20, 2005

30 September 23, 2005 Contemporary Feminist Theories Group B: Jundel Pancho, Des Villanueva (If possible try to finish discussion in one session only; in this case Postmodernism will start Sept 27, 2005)

31 September 27, 2005 Contemporary Feminist Theories Group B: (Pancho, Villanueva) only if discussion is not finished for session 30

32 September 30, 2005 Postmodernism/ Poststructuralism: …Michel Foucault GroupA: Charles Cadano, Leonilo Plata III, Christian Mercader (If possible Postmodernism will be disussed Sept 30 and Oct 4 only/ If feminist theories gets done in one session only, postmodernism will be discussed September 27, 2005)

33 October 4, 2005 Postmodernism/ Poststructuralism: Frederic Jameson Group A: (Cadano, Leonilo, Mercader)

34 October 7, 2005 Postmodernism/ Poststructuralism: Jean Baudrillard Group 14

35 October 11, 2005 (We can adjust finals to this date if Postmodernism can be discussed in one or two sessions only)

36 October 14, 2005 FINALS

37 October 18, 2005 FINALS

38 SEMESTRAL BREAK

Please read also the resources in this blog. Most of them are from the original texts.
Happy studying! They say theory is like a mountain, we have to study it simply because it is there.

Justin

The Metropolis and Mental Life by Georg Simmel

The Metropolis and Mental Life
by Georg Simmel
adapted by D. Weinstein from Kurt Wolff (Trans.) The Sociology of Georg Simmel. New York: Free Press, 1950, pp.409-424

Terms followed by numbers in {} are defined at the bottom of the essay

1.
The deepest problems of modern life derive from the claim of the individual to preserve the autonomy and individuality of his existence in the face of overwhelming social forces, of historical heritage, of external culture, and of the technique of life. The fight with nature which primitive man has to wage for his bodily existence attains in this modern form its latest transformation. The eighteenth century called upon man to free himself of all the historical bonds in the state and in religion, in morals and in economics. Man's nature, originally good and common to all, should develop unhampered. In addition to more liberty, the nineteenth century demanded the functional specialization {1} of man and his work; this specialization makes one individual incomparable to another, and each of them indispensable to the highest possible extent. However, this specialization makes each man the more directly dependent upon the supplementary activities of all others. Nietzsche sees the full development of the individual conditioned by the most ruthless struggle of individuals; socialism believes in the suppression of all competition for the same reason. Be that as it may, in all these positions the same basic motive is at work: the person resists to being leveled down and worn out by a social-technological mechanism. An inquiry into the inner meaning of specifically modern life and its products, into the soul {2} of the cultural body, so to speak, must seek to solve the equation which structures like the metropolis set up between the individual and the super-individual contents of life {3}. Such an inquiry must answer the question of how the personality accommodates itself in the adjustments to external forces. This will be my task today.

-What is the deepest problem of modern life as Simmel sees it?
2.
The psychological basis of the metropolitan type of individuality consists in the intensification of nervous stimulation which results from the swift and uninterrupted change of outer and inner stimuli. Man is a differentiating creature. His mind is stimulated by the difference between a momentary impression and the one which preceded it. Lasting impressions, {4} impressions which differ only slightly from one another, impressions which take a regular and habitual course and show regular and habitual contrasts-all these use up, so to speak, less consciousness than does the rapid crowding of changing images, the sharp discontinuity in the grasp of a single glance, and the unexpectedness of onrushing impressions. These are the psychological conditions which the metropolis creates. With each crossing of the street, with the tempo and multiplicity of economic, occupational and social life, the city sets up a deep contrast with small town and rural life with reference to the sensory foundations of psychic life. The metropolis exacts from man as a discriminating creature a different amount of consciousness than does rural life. Here the rhythm of life and sensory mental imagery flows more slowly, more habitually, and more evenly. Precisely in this connection the sophisticated character of metropolitan psychic life becomes understandable - as over against small town life which rests more upon deeply felt and emotional relationships. These latter are rooted in the more unconscious layers of the psyche {5} and grow most readily in the steady rhythm of uninterrupted habituations. The intellect {6}, however, has its locus in the transparent, conscious, higher layers of the psyche; it is the most adaptable of our inner forces. In order to accommodate to change and to the contrast of phenomena, the intellect does not require any shocks and inner upheavals; it is only through such upheavals that the more conservative mind could accommodate to the metropolitan rhythm of events. Thus the metropolitan type of man-which, of course, exists in a thousand individual variants - develops an organ protecting him against the threatening currents and discrepancies of his external environment which would uproot him. He reacts with his head instead of his heart. In this an increased awareness assumes the psychic prerogative. Metropolitan life, thus, underlies a heightened awareness and a predominance of intelligence in metropolitan man. The reaction to metropolitan phenomena is shifted to that organ which is least sensitive and quite remote from the depth of the personality. Intellectuality is thus seen to preserve subjective life against the overwhelming power of metropolitan life, and intellectuality branches out in many directions and is integrated with numerous discrete phenomena.

-What is the psychological basis of individuality in the metropolis?
-Which layer of the psyche predominates in the metropolis?
-What other terms does Simmel use as synonyms for metropolis"? What other terms does he use for "rural life"?
-What organ protects the "metropolitan man"?
3.
The metropolis has always been the seat of the money economy. Here the multiplicity and concentration of economic exchange gives an importance to the means of exchange {7} which the scantiness of rural commerce would not have allowed. Money economy and the dominance of the intellect are intrinsically connected. They share a matter-of-fact attitude in dealing with men and with things; and, in this attitude, a formal justice {8} is often coupled with an inconsiderate hardness. The intellectually sophisticated person is indifferent to all genuine individuality, because relationships and reactions result from it which cannot be exhausted with logical operations. In the same manner, the individuality of phenomena is not commensurate with the pecuniary {9} principle. Money is concerned only with what is common to all: it asks for the exchange value, it reduces all quality and individuality to the question: How much? All intimate emotional relations between persons are founded in their individuality, whereas in rational relations man is reckoned with like a number, like an element which is in itself indifferent. Only the objective measurable achievement is of interest. Thus metropolitan man reckons with his merchants and customers, his domestic servants and often even with persons with whom he is obliged to have social intercourse. These features of intellectuality contrast with the nature of the small circle in which the inevitable knowledge of individuality as inevitably produces a warmer tone of behavior, a behavior which is beyond a mere objective balancing of service and return. In the sphere of the economic psychology of the small group it is of importance that under primitive conditions production serves the customer who orders the good, so that the producer and the consumer are acquainted. The modern metropolis, however, is supplied almost entirely by production for the market, that is, for entirely unknown purchasers who never personally enter the producer's actual field of vision. Through this anonymity the interests of each party acquire an unmerciful matter-of-factness; and the intellectually calculating economic egoisms of both parties need not fear any deflection because of the imponderables of personal relationships. The money economy {10} dominates the metropolis; it has displaced the last survivals of domestic production and the direct barter of goods; it minimizes, from day to day, the amount of work ordered by customers. The matter-of-fact attitude is obviously so intimately interrelated with the money economy, which is dominant in the metropolis, that nobody can say whether the intellectualistic mentality first promoted the money economy or whether the latter determined the former. The metropolitan way of life is certainly the most fertile soil for this reciprocity, a point which I shall document merely by citing the dictum of the most eminent English constitutional historian: throughout the whole course of English history, London has never acted as England's heart but often as England's intellect and always as her moneybag!

-What is the relationship between the money economy and the dominance of the intellect?
-What did production for market replace?
4.
In certain seemingly insignificant traits, which lie upon the surface of life, the same psychic currents characteristically unite. Modern mind has become more and more calculating. The calculative exactness of practical life which the money economy has brought about corresponds to the ideal of natural science: to transform the world into an arithmetic problem, to fix every part of the world by mathematical formulas. Only money economy has filled the days of so many people with weighing, calculating, with numerical determinations, with a reduction of qualitative {11} values to quantitative {12} ones. Through the calculative nature of money a new precision, a certainty in the definition of identities and differences, an unambiguousness in agreements and arrangements has been brought about in the relations of life-elements - just as externally this precision has been effected by the universal diffusion of pocket watches. However, the conditions of metropolitan life are at once cause and effect of this trait. The relationships and affairs of the typical metropolitan usually are so varied and complex that without the strictest punctuality in promises and services the whole structure would break down into an inextricable chaos. Above all, this necessity is brought about by the aggregation of so many people with such differentiated interests, who must integrate their relations and activities into a highly complex organism. If all clocks and watches in Berlin would suddenly go wrong in different ways, even if only by one hour, all economic life and communication of the city would be disrupted for a long time. In addition an apparently mere external factor: long distances, would make all waiting and broken appointments result in an ill-afforded waste of time. Thus, the technique of metropolitan life is unimaginable without the most punctual integration of all activities and mutual relations into a stable and impersonal time schedule. Here again the general conclusions of this entire task of reflection become obvious namely, that from each point on the surface of existence - however closely attached to the surface alone - one may drop a sounding into the depth of the psyche so that all the most banal externalities of life finally are connected with the ultimate decisions concerning the meaning and style of life. Punctuality, calculability, exactness are forced upon life by the complexity and extension of metropolitan existence and are not only most intimately connected with its money economy and intellectualist character. These traits must also color the contents of life and favor the exclusion of those irrational, instinctive, sovereign traits and impulses which aim at determining the mode of life from within, instead of receiving the general and precisely schematized form of life from without. Even though sovereign types of personality {13}, characterized by irrational impulses, are by no means impossible in the city, they are nevertheless, opposed to typical city life. The passionate hatred of men like Ruskin and Nietzsche for the metropolis is understandable in these terms. Their natures discovered the value of life alone in the unschematized existence which cannot be defined with precision for all alike. From the same source of this hatred of the metropolis surged their hatred of money economy and of the intellectualism of modern existence.

-Why is clock time impersonal?
5.
The same factors which have thus coalesced into the exactness and minute precision of the form of life have coalesced into a structure of the highest impersonality; on the other hand, they have promoted a highly personal subjectivity. There is perhaps no psychic phenomenon which has been so unconditionally reserved to the metropolis as has the blasé {14} attitude. The blasé attitude results first from the rapidly changing and closely compressed contrasting stimulations of the nerves. From this, the enhancement of metropolitan intellectuality, also, seems originally to stem. Therefore, stupid people who are not intellectually alive in the first place usually are not exactly blasé. A life in boundless pursuit of pleasure makes one blasé because it agitates the nerves to their strongest reactivity for such a long time that they finally cease to react at all. In the same way, through the rapidity and contradictoriness of their changes, more harmless impressions force such violent responses, tearing the nerves so brutally hither and thither that their last reserves of strength are spent; and if one remains in the same milieu they have no time to gather new strength. An incapacity thus emerges to react to new sensations with the appropriate energy. This constitutes that blasé attitude which, in fact, every metropolitan child shows when compared with children of quieter and less changeable milieus.

-What is a blasé attitude?
6.
This physiological source of the metropolitan blasé attitude is joined by another source which flows from the money economy. The essence of the blasé attitude consists in the blunting of discrimination. This does not mean that the objects are not perceived, as is the case with the half-wit, but rather that the meaning and differing values of things, and thereby the things themselves, are experienced as insubstantial. They appear to the blasé person in an evenly flat and gray tone; no one object deserves preference over any other. This mood is the faithful subjective reflection of the completely internalized money economy. By being the equivalent to all the manifold things in one and the same way, money becomes the most frightful leveler. For money expresses all qualitative differences of things in terms of "how much?" Money, with all its colorlessness and indifference, becomes the common denominator of all values; irreparably it hollows out the core of things, their individuality, their specific value, and their incomparability. All things float with equal specific gravity in the constantly moving stream of money. All things lie on the same level and differ from one another only in the size of the area which they cover. In the individual case this coloration, or rather discoloration, of things through their money equivalence may be unnoticeably minute. However, through the relations of the rich to the objects to be had for money, perhaps even through the total character which the mentality of the contemporary public everywhere imparts to these objects, the exclusively pecuniary evaluation of objects has become quite considerable. The large cities, the main seats of the money exchange, bring the purchasability of things to the fore much more impressively than do smaller localities. That is why cities are also the genuine locale of the blasé attitude. In the blasé attitude the concentration of men and things stimulate the nervous system of the individual to its highest achievement so that it attains its peak. Through the mere quantitative intensification of the same conditioning factors this achievement is transformed into its opposite and appears in the peculiar adjustment of the blasé attitude. In this phenomenon the nerves find in the refusal to react to their stimulation the last possibility of accommodating to the contents and forms of metropolitan life. The self-preservation of certain personalities is brought at the price of devaluating the whole objective world, a devaluation which in the end unavoidably drags one's own personality down into a feeling of the same worthlessness.

-How does money relate to the blasé attitude?
7.
Whereas the subject of this form of existence has to come to terms with it entirely for himself, his self-preservation in the face of the large city demands from him a no less negative behavior of a social nature. This mental attitude of metropolitans toward one another we may designate, from a formal point of view, as reserve {15}. If so many inner reactions were responses to the continuous external contacts with innumerable people as are those in the small town, where one knows almost everybody one meets and where one has a positive relation to almost everyone, one would be completely atomized internally and come to an unimaginable psychic state. Partly this psychological fact, partly the right to distrust which men have in the face of the touch-and-go elements of metropolitan life, necessitates our reserve. As a result of this reserve we frequently do not even know by sight those who have been our neighbors for years. And it is this reserve which in the eyes of the small-town people makes us appear to be cold and heartless. Indeed, if I do not deceive myself, the inner aspect of this outer reserve is not only indifference but, more often than we are aware, it is a slight aversion, a mutual strangeness and repulsion, which will break into hatred and fight at the moment of a closer contact, however caused. The whole inner organization of such an extensive communicative life rests upon an extremely varied hierarchy of sympathies, indifferences, and aversions of the briefest as well as of the most permanent nature. The sphere of indifference in this hierarchy is not as large as might appear on the surface. Our psychic activity still responds to almost every impression of somebody else with a somewhat distinct feeling. The unconscious, fluid and changing character of this impression seems to result in a state of indifference. Actually this indifference would be just as unnatural as the diffusion of indiscriminate mutual suggestion would be unbearable. From both these typical dangers of the metropolis, indifference and indiscriminate suggestibility, antipathy protects us. A latent antipathy and the preparatory stage of practical antagonism effect the distances and aversions without which this mode of life could not at all be led. The extent and the mixture of this style of life, the rhythm of its emergence and disappearance, the forms in which it is satisfied- all these, with the unifying motives in the narrower sense, form the inseparable whole of the metropolitan style of life. What appears in the metropolitan style of life directly as dissociation is in reality only one of its elemental forms of socialization.

-What attitude do people in the metropolis have toward one another?
8.
This reserve with its overtone of hidden aversion appears in turn as the form or the cloak of a more general mental phenomenon of the metropolis: it grants to the individual a kind and an amount of personal freedom which has no analogy whatsoever under other conditions. The metropolis goes back to one of the large developmental tendencies of social life as such, to one of the few tendencies for which an approximately universal formula can be discovered. The earliest phase of social formations found in historical as well as in contemporary social structures is this: a relatively small circle firmly closed against neighboring, strange, or in some way antagonistic circles. However, this circle is closely coherent and allows its individual members only a narrow field for the development of unique qualities and free, self-responsible movements. Political and kinship groups, parties and religious associations begin in this way. The self-preservation of very young associations requires the establishment of strict boundaries and a centripetal unity. Therefore they cannot allow the individual freedom and unique inner and outer development. From this stage social development proceeds at once in two different, yet corresponding, directions. To the extent to which the group grows - numerically, spatially, in significance and in content of life - to the same degree the group's direct, inner unity loosens, and the rigidity of the original demarcation against others is softened through mutual relations and connections. At the same time, the individual gains freedom of movement, far beyond the first jealous delimitation. The individual also gains a specific individuality to which the division of labor in the enlarged group gives both occasion and necessity. The state and Christianity, guilds and political parties, and innumerable other groups have developed according to this formula, however much, of course, the special conditions and forces of the respective groups have modified the general scheme. This scheme seems to me distinctly recognizable also in the evolution of individuality within urban life. The small-town life in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages set barriers against movement and relations of the individual toward the outside, and it set up barriers against individual independence and differentiation within the individual self. These barriers were such that under them modern man could not have breathed. Even today a metropolitan man who is placed in a small town feels a restriction similar, at least, in kind. The smaller the circle which forms our milieu is, and the more restricted those relations to others are which dissolve the boundaries of the individual, the more anxiously the circle guards the achievements, the conduct of life, and the outlook of the individual, and the more readily a quantitative and qualitative specialization would break up the framework of the whole little circle.

-How does personal freedom differ in the "small" versus the "enlarged" circle? What accounts for that difference?
9.
The ancient polis {16} in this respect seems to have had the very character of a small town. The constant threat to its existence at the hands of enemies from near and afar effected strict coherence in political and military respects, a supervision of the citizen by the citizen, a jealousy of the whole against the individual whose particular life was suppressed to such a degree that he could compensate only by acting as a despot in his own household. The tremendous agitation and excitement, the unique colorfulness of Athenian life, can perhaps be understood in terms of the fact that a people of incomparably individualized personalities struggled against the constant inner and outer pressure of a deindividualizing small town. This produced a tense atmosphere in which the weaker individuals were suppressed and those of stronger natures were incited to prove themselves in the most passionate manner. This is precisely why it was that there blossomed in Athens what must be called, without defining it exactly, "the general human character" in the intellectual development of our species. For we maintain factual as well as historical validity for the following connection: the most extensive and the most general contents and forms of life are most intimately connected with the most individual ones. They have a preparatory stage in common, that is, they find their enemy in narrow formations and groupings the maintenance of which places both of them into a state of defense against expanse and generality lying without and the freely moving individuality within. Just as in the feudal age, the "free" man was the one who stood under the law of the land, that is, under the law of the largest social orbit, and the unfree man was the one who derived his right merely from the narrow circle of a feudal association and was excluded from the larger social orbit - so today metropolitan man is "free" in a spiritualized and refined sense, in contrast to the pettiness and prejudices which hem in the small-town man. For the reciprocal reserve and indifference and the intellectual life conditions of large circles are never felt more strongly by the individual in their impact upon his independence than in the thickest crowd of the big city. This is because the bodily proximity and narrowness of space makes the mental distance only the more visible. It is obviously only the obverse {17}of this freedom if, under certain circumstances, one nowhere feels as lonely and lost as in the metropolitan crowd. For here as elsewhere it is by no means necessary that the freedom of man be reflected in his emotional life as comfort.

-How does ancient Athens compare to your high school?
-Where does the person in the metropolis feel most lonely? What is the positive side of that experience?
10.
It is not only the immediate size of the area and the number of persons which, because of the universal historical correlation between the enlargement of the circle and the personal inner and outer freedom, has made the metropolis the locale of freedom. It is rather in transcending this visible expanse that any given city becomes the seat of cosmopolitanism.{18} The horizon of the city expands in a manner comparable to the way in which wealth develops; a certain amount of property increases in a quasi-automatical way in ever more rapid progression. As soon as a certain limit has been passed, the economic, personal, and intellectual relations of the citizenry, the sphere of intellectual predominance of the city over its hinterland, grow as in geometrical progression. Every gain in dynamic extension becomes a step, not for an equal, but for a new and larger extension. From every thread spinning out of the city, ever new threads grow as if by themselves, just as within the city the unearned increment of ground rent, through the mere increase in communication, brings the owner automatically increasing profits. At this point, the quantitative aspect of life is transformed directly into qualitative traits of character. The sphere of life of the small town is, in the main, self-contained and autarchic. {19} For it is the decisive nature of the metropolis that its inner life overflows by waves into a far-flung national or international area. Weimar is not an example to the contrary, since its significance was hinged upon individual personalities and died with them; whereas the metropolis is indeed characterized by its essential independence even from the most eminent individual personalities. This is the counterpart to the independence, and it is the price the individual pays for the independence, which he enjoys in the metropolis. The most significant characteristic of the metropolis is this functional extension beyond its physical boundaries. And this efficacy reacts in turn and gives weight, importance, and responsibility to metropolitan life. Man does not end with the limits of his body or the area comprising his immediate activity. Rather is the range of the person constituted by the sum of effects emanating from him temporally and spatially. In the same way, a city consists of its total effects which extend beyond its immediate confines. Only this range is the city's actual extent in which its existence is expressed. This fact makes it obvious that individual freedom, the logical and historical complement of such extension, is not to be understood only in the negative sense of mere freedom of mobility and elimination of prejudices and petty philistinism. The essential point is that the particularity and incomparability, which ultimately every human being possesses, be somehow expressed in the working-out of a way of life. That we follow the laws of our own nature-and this after all is freedom-becomes obvious and convincing to ourselves and to others only if the expressions of this nature differ from the expressions of others. Only our unmistakability proves that our way of life has not been superimposed by others.

-What does Simmel mean by cosmopolitanism?
-What is freedom, in its negative sense? What is freedom, in its positive sense?
11.
Cities are, first of all, seats of the highest economic division of labor. They produce thereby such extreme phenomena as in Paris the remunerative occupation of the quatorzième. They are persons who identify themselves by signs on their residences and who are ready at the dinner hour in correct attire, so that they can be quickly called upon if a dinner party should consist of thirteen persons. In the measure of its expansion, the city offers more and more the decisive conditions of the division of labor. It offers a circle which through its size can absorb a highly diverse variety of services. At the same time, the concentration of individuals and their struggle for customers compel the individual to specialize in a function from which he cannot be readily displaced by another. It is decisive that city life has transformed the struggle with nature for livelihood into an inter-human struggle for gain, which here is not granted by nature but by other men. For specialization does not flow only from the competition for gain but also from the underlying fact that the seller must always seek to call forth new and differentiated needs of the lured customer. In order to find a source of income which is not yet exhausted, and to find a function which cannot readily be displaced, it is necessary to specialize in one's services. This process promotes differentiation, refinement, and the enrichment of the public's needs, which obviously must lead to growing personal differences within this public.

-What are some contemporary equivalents of the quatorzième?
-What is the basis of the struggle of the traditional versus the modern society?
12.
All this forms the transition to the individualization of mental and psychic traits which the city occasions in proportion to its size. There is a whole series of obvious causes underlying this process. First, one must meet the difficulty of asserting his own personality within the dimensions of metropolitan life. Where the quantitative increase in importance and the expense of energy reach their limits, one seizes upon qualitative differentiation in order somehow to attract the attention of the social circle by playing upon its sensitivity for differences. Finally, man is tempted to adopt the most tendentious {20} peculiarities, that is, the specifically metropolitan extravagances of mannerism, caprice, and preciousness. Now, the meaning of these extravagances does not at all lie in the contents of such behavior, but rather in its form of "being different," of standing out in a striking manner and thereby attracting attention. For many character types, ultimately the only means of saving for themselves some modicum of self-esteem and the sense of filling a position is indirect, through the awareness of others. In the same sense a seemingly insignificant factor is operating, the cumulative effects of which are, however, still noticeable. I refer to the brevity and scarcity of the inter-human contacts granted to the metropolitan man, as compared with social intercourse in the small town. The temptation to appear "to the point," to appear concentrated and strikingly characteristic, lies much closer to the individual in brief metropolitan contacts than in an atmosphere in which frequent and prolonged association assures the personality of an unambiguous image of himself in the eyes of the other.

-If you know anything about rock stars, how can you explain their "tendentious peculiarities"?
-Why is being noticed more important in modern society than in traditional society?
13.
The most profound reason, however, why the metropolis conduces to the urge for the most individual personal existence - no matter whether justified and successful - appears to me to be the following: the development of modern culture is characterized by the preponderance of what one may call the "objective spirit" {21} over the "subjective spirit." {22} This is to say, in language as well as in law, in the technique of production as well as in art, in science as well as in the objects of the domestic environment, there is embodied a sum of spirit {23}. The individual in his intellectual development follows the growth of this spirit very imperfectly and at an ever increasing distance. If, for instance, we view the immense culture which for the last hundred years has been embodied in things and in knowledge, in institutions and in comforts, and if we compare all this with the cultural progress of the individual during the same period-at least in high status groups - a frightful disproportion in growth between the two becomes evident. Indeed, at some points we notice a retrogression in the culture of the individual with reference to spirituality, delicacy, and idealism. This discrepancy results essentially from the growing division of labor. For the division of labor demands from the individual an ever more one-sided accomplishment, and the greatest advance in a one-sided pursuit only too frequently means dearth to the personality of the individual. In any case, he can cope less and less with the overgrowth of objective culture. The individual is reduced to a negligible quantity, perhaps less in his consciousness than in his practice and in the totality of his obscure emotional states that are derived from this practice. The individual has become a mere cog in an enormous organization of things and powers which tear from his hands all progress, spirituality, and value in order to transform them from their subjective form into the form of a purely objective life. It needs merely to be pointed out that the metropolis is the genuine arena of this culture which outgrows all personal life. Here in buildings and educational institutions, in the wonders and comforts of space-conquering technology, in the formations of community life, and in the visible institutions of the state, is offered such an overwhelming fullness of crystallized and impersonalized spirit that the personality, so to speak, cannot maintain itself under its impact. On the one hand, life is made infinitely easy for the personality in that stimulations, interests, uses of time and consciousness are offered to it from all sides. They carry the person as if in a stream, and one needs hardly to swim for oneself. On the other hand, however, life is composed more and more of these impersonal contents and offerings which tend to displace the genuine personal colorations and incomparabilities. This results in the individual's summoning the utmost in uniqueness and particularization, in order to preserve his most personal core. He has to exaggerate this personal element in order to remain audible even to himself. The atrophy {24} of individual culture through the hypertrophy {25} of objective culture is one reason for the bitter hatred which the preachers of the most extreme individualism, above all Nietzsche, harbor against the metropolis. But it is, indeed, also a reason why these preachers are so passionately loved in the metropolis and why they appear to the metropolitan man as the prophets and saviors of his most unsatisfied yearnings.

-What does Simmel mean by the phrase: "the hypertrophy of objective culture"?
14.
If one asks for the historical position of the two forms of individualism which are nourished by the quantitative relation of the metropolis, namely, individual independence and the elaboration of individuality itself, then the metropolis assumes an entirely new rank order in the world history of the spirit. The eighteenth century found the individual in oppressive bonds which had become meaningless-bonds of a political, agrarian, guild, and religious character. They were restraints which, so to speak, forced upon man an unnatural form and outmoded, unjust inequalities. In this situation the cry for liberty and equality arose, the belief in the individual's full freedom of movement in all social and intellectual relationships. Freedom would at once permit the noble substance common to all to come to the fore, a substance which nature had deposited in every man and which society and history had only deformed. Besides this eighteenth-century ideal of liberalism, in the nineteenth century, through Goethe and Romanticism, on the one hand, and through the economic division of labor, on the other hand, another ideal arose: individuals liberated from historical bonds now wished to distinguish themselves from one another. The carrier of man's values is no longer the "general human being" in every individual, but rather man's qualitative uniqueness and irreplaceability. The external and internal history of our time takes its course within the struggle and in the changing entanglements of these two ways of defining the individual's role in the whole of society. It is the function of the metropolis to provide the arena for this struggle and its reconciliation. For the metropolis presents the peculiar conditions which are revealed to us as the opportunities and the stimuli for the development of both these ways of allocating roles to men. Therewith these conditions gain a unique place, pregnant with inestimable meanings for the development of psychic existence. The metropolis reveals itself as one of those great historical formations in which opposing streams which enclose life unfold, as well as join one another with equal right. However, in this process the currents of life, whether their individual phenomena touch us sympathetically or antipathetically, entirely transcend the sphere for which the judge's attitude is appropriate. Since such forces of life have grown into the roots and into the crown of the whole of the historical life in which we, in our fleeting existence, as a cell, belong only as a part, it is not our task either to accuse or to pardon, but only to understand.

-How does the "aim" of the Romantic Revolution of the 19th century differ from the "aim" of the French Revolution of 1789?
ENDNOTES
1 functional specialization is the division of labor, or work, into separate tasks, each of which contributes to the total result (like an anaesthesiologist, surgeon, surgical nurse, etc. participating in an operation); the contribution of each specialized task to the total result is its function
2 what gives something meaning
3 super-individual contents of life are what the individuals in a society share; the term includes culture (for example, money, which is the same thing for all of those who exchange it and exchange for it)
4 sense data: what is seen, heard, smelled, touched, tasted and felt
5 the entire conscious life of an individual; its "highest level" is the intellect; its "lowest level" is mute feeling
6 the part of the psyche (mind) that thinks things out and calculates the causes and consequences of action
7 means of exchange are the ways things (goods and services) are transferred from one individual to another; eg., by money, by barter, or by custom (eg. birthday gifts)
8 formal justice means that who gets what is strictly determined by rules that pay no attention to individual differences
9 having to do with money
10 in the money economy, things and services are produced for money and acquired by paying money for them (as opposed to barter and common sharing)
11 expressed in non-numerical characteristics - eg., color, emotion
12 expressed in numbers
13 sovereign types of personality are personalities that will not change or compromise their distinctive attitudes, behaviors and desires
14 unresponsiveness to stimulation; refusal or inability to be emotionally moved by or involved in people and things
15 holding back from responding fully to other people
16 the unit of ancient Greek society; the city state (Chicago, without the U.S. or Illinois, ruling itself completely)
17 the other side of the story
18 the attitude that nothing human is foreign to me; that the whole realm of culture, wherever it originates, is open to me - I draw no boundaries around parts of culture that make those parts belong only to separate groups (eg., "Italian culture is only for Italians")
19 self-sufficient
20 imposing an agenda, imposing one's will
21 objective culture - the collection of rules, tools, symbols and products created by human beings
22 subjective culture - what individuals have been able to absorb and integrate into themselves from objective culture
23 spirit is mind or consciousness, and the results of conscious activity (culture) (for example, composing music and the music that has been composed are types or modes of spirit)
24 wasting away
25 over-developme