Sociology: Feminism and Marx Weber
Contents
- Introduction
- Part 1
- Ontology.
- Epistemology
- Part II
- Patriarchy
- Conclusion
Introduction
Sociology has always been a masculine discipline. As Abbott, Wallace, and Tyler have noted, "Despite long-standing criticisms of its male orientation and bias, sociology remains a relatively male-dominated discipline" (p. 1). Both in terms of the number of women in sociology who have reached the top of the professional ladder and in terms of the ideas that have become centralized in sociology. This fundamental error, according to feminists, has implications for the theories, methods, research and teaching of sociology. However, the women's movement and feminist scholarship have raised fundamental questions about sociology and society. These questions made blind acceptance of the sociological canon, especially the classical one, impossible. As Dorothy Smith says, "The women's movement has given us a sense of our right to have women's interests represented in sociology, rather than the interests traditionally represented in a male-dominated sociology as authoritative" (Smith: 27). George Ritzer, in his book Sociological Theory, discusses how the contributions of female sociologists in the classical era of sociology were overlooked and how second wave feminist activism aimed to bring these women and their work back to life (Ritzer). One might ask: if these women had been adequately represented in the canon, would sociology have taken a different form? More specifically, would sociological theories of gender have been different?
What we can say with certainty is that the influence of feminism has been so great that contemporary sociology can no longer ignore gender in its analysis. The attempt of a feminist science was to question, criticize and rethink masculine disciplines. This also had obvious implications in sociology. As mentioned earlier, feminist sociology asks fundamental questions about the number of women in sociology and what happens to them and their contributions. It also raises more fundamental questions about the nature of sociology itself. Feminists not only seek answers to the problem of the shortage of female sociologists as professors in sociology departments, but also interrogate ontological and epistemological questions about how sociologists see the world around them. The feminist effort is not only to see how gender shapes men and women in society, but also to discover the highly gendered nature of the social world. According to George Ritzer, feminism and sociology share a long-standing relationship that began when feminists turned to sociology to answer the fundamental questions of feminism: what about women, why is everything the same? it is, how can it be changed to create a more just world? Society, and more recently, what about the differences between women? (Ritzer: 457). Because sociology is about understanding the relationship between our own personal experiences and the social structures in which we live, the stated goal of sociology has always been the study of social structures and the study of the individual in relation to they. As C. Wright Mills says, “Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both” (Mills: 3). From such a view of sociology, it is necessary to pose sociological questions from the point of view of women. Indeed, critical sociology purported to seek an explanation for the inequality of power relations that determine the social status of people in a society. Despite this, sociology has retained its male bias. This is probably because sociology was born in the context of the Enlightenment, when society in the West was organized according to the Cartesian binary relationship of mind/body, public/private, culture/nature, male/female, and so on. It has been a thorough questioning of this division that has led to a serious fundamental challenge for sociology.
Ritzer discusses Western feminist writing in sociology as such, stating that “feminist writing is related to feminist social activism, which has varied in intensity over the past two hundred years; the climaxes occur in the "moments" of liberation in modern Western history» (Ritzer, pp. 457). Ritzer provides a comprehensive account of the connections between the various waves of feminism and their effect on sociology. She suggests that second-wave feminism brought a critical perspective to the modernist distinction between public and private.
Dorothy Smith discusses how a sociology starting from the point of view of women's traditional place in it, usually within the private sphere, would imply an entirely new view of the discipline itself; Contrary to popular belief, she says, this is much more than treating the feminist perspective as an "add-on" to mainstream sociology, as a mere "add-on" does not explain the divide between the worlds of men and women, nor does it analyze the relationship between They. Sociology needs an epistemological shift to focus on the female perspective, and mentioning a gender perspective to appease feminists is not enough; on the contrary, it is more likely to marginalize than do justice to the feminist cause. Furthermore, and particularly in the Indian context, Sharmila Rege argues that the separation of sociology and feminism brought about by the development of women's research centers in universities, while important in some respects, has led to a ghettoization within academia in many ways (Rege).
While the question of how to theorize and approach gender is of increasing importance for contemporary sociology, the influence of feminism on the general theoretical and methodological canon is still uneven. The male mainstream bias still has a significant impact on sociological theory. More and more feminist sociologists are looking for an alternative approach that places feminist contributions to sociology at the center of the discipline. Feminist sociologists also seek to make connections between sociological theory, either by criticizing it or by seeking continuity. This module is an attempt to do that with the work of Max Weber. The form is by no means exhaustive.
Part 1
Classical sociology emerged in the context of rapid social change, commonly known as the Age of Enlightenment. Inevitably, this context had a strong impact on the work of the so-called "founders" of sociology - Marx, Durkheim and Weber - all of whom sought to understand this change. More importantly, this was when the so-called masters of the discipline defined the grammar of the discipline. All argued that sociology should be a science, as opposed to common sense or philosophy. Two of the most important ideas to emerge from the Enlightenment were those of rationality and modernity; these ideas formed the core of the sociological writings of the time. Contemporary sociology has not only built on the works and ideas of these thinkers, but has also criticized them. Feminist sociology has done the same. Of the three classic sociologists, Weber proves a little more difficult than the others in many respects. So, in a way, this module is exploratory and we encourage you to use your knowledge of Weber from the other modules to ask feminist questions. Weber established what is known as the interpretivist tradition in sociology. Interpretive methodology has been an interesting but complex ally of feminist ontologies and epistemologies. This section is an exercise and illustration for establishing continuity with Weber's methodological principles.
Ontology.
Interpretative arguments have developed as a critique of positivism, something feminists have, of course, done in their own field. Establishing continuity between Weber's interpretivism and the feminist critique of positivism would help to develop a Weberian feminist sociology. Unlike positivism, interpretivism holds that the social universe is a construct and not a fact. Simply put, it means that we as individuals and societies make society by giving meaning to our actions. In short, we are not puppets, manipulated by nature or by society. This helps feminists defend the difference between sex and gender. This helps to argue that gender, while a biological fact, is socially and culturally constructed through the Weberian process of meaning-making. As such, beliefs about what is properly masculine and/or feminine are not fixed and are subject to change. Contemporary feminists like Judith Butler take this a step further by asserting that even sex is a construct of society because it is society that shapes and shapes the physical body as well. For example, according to feminists, women's perceived inherent physical weakness is constructed by meanings attached to food and nutritional habits and notions of beauty. Women become physically weaker because they don't get the same nutritious diet as men, simply because of beliefs and values about what women's bodies deserve, do, or should look like.
Therefore, it can be said that Weber's ontology of social constructionism fits better with feminist notions of how gender is constructed via the social determinism of positivism, which argues that the gendered division of labor, or sex differences , is largely fixed by nature and biology and that the Social System simply uses these natural tendencies to organize societies. And yet Sandra Harding (Harding) argues that interpretivist methods can sometimes be used to justify a totally relativistic position with which one can justify all ways of being, including patriarchal ones. We can put ourselves in a position where we have to give equal weight and value to feminist versions of the truth of a situation and patriarchal versions of the same. This can prove detrimental to a feminist politics based on the idea that how women experience/make sense of their oppression should be given more prominence than the experiences and meanings given by men. To cite an extreme example, if we were to use interpretivist methods to understand and justify the cultural significance attached to son preference in India and equate it with feminist demands that the resulting abortions be justified by the prohibition of sex selection, let's do no injustice to feminist politics that demand justice. We must be wary of this danger of interpretativism which could lead us to total relativism. Note Weber's reflections on social action. Weber's social constructionism focuses on human agency in social agency. While Weber's classification of social action encompasses all possible modes of action, it provides a valuable toolkit for critically analyzing different forms of patriarchal action. We find in his scheme of social action categories of social action that can explain patriarchy, but also those that call into question this patriarchy. His notion of traditional action can be a conceptual tool used to describe and analyze patriarchal behavior, and his value-based rational action can be used as a tool to understand behaviors that patriarchy based on values such as equality , justice and may challenge rights. In fact, the feminist movement itself can be seen as rational values-based action by individuals and collectives. For example, the right to life for women can be defended as a value against the traditions of female infanticide and fetal murder in our country.
Epistemology
Weberian interpretivist epistemology is probably based on the central idea of verstehen, which means knowledge and through understanding of the experience and meaning of the actions given by the subjects. This, she argued, required empathy and not distance. Weber argued that the sociologist's role as a social scientist is different from that of a natural scientist. He argued that while the natural sciences can explain and predict through observation and experimentation, the scope of the social sciences is different because the object of the social sciences is different. According to Weber, persons are signifiers. To understand what they mean, sociologists must therefore deepen their understanding of human subjectivity, a principle closely related to feminist epistemologies that have focused on the subjective "experience" of women as an epistemological category. Simply put, this means that women argued that much theoretical knowledge about society is based on abstractions rather than experience. They argued that women's life experience must be an important starting point for theorizing about women's lives.
For example, structural-functionalist approaches to the family argue that the gendered division of labor between women as housewives and men as breadwinners is good for the balance of a larger social system. It is claimed that if properly socialized, both males and females will be happy with this arrangement. Feminist research indicates that when we ask women if and if they experience family life this way, the answer is often no. Women express the desire to work, to run for politics, to be in the public domain. Feminist epistemologies, largely in line with a Weberian sociology, argue that if we begin our theories with these subjective experiences, our theories will achieve the goal of understanding rather than simply stating. Weber also came up with the idea of value neutrality. While treating subjectivities through verstehen, Weber proposed that it is possible to achieve a kind of objectivity. In his view, the combination of empathy for the meanings of the topics in our study and a distance from our common sense, values and beliefs as a sociologist would give us a better understanding of social truths.
For Weber, it is the duty of the sociologist to identify and acknowledge one's values and to overcome one's personal biases when conducting sociological research. While the epistemologies of feminist positions and postmodern writings emphasize the need to write oneself, they also speak of reflexivity as an aid to good inquiry. Reflexivity requires researchers to distance themselves from their own places and to empathize with them. While the Weberian goal for value neutrality differs from the goal for reflexivity, the processes may be similar.
Part II
We will now look further into the concept of patriarchy, the unequal distribution of social resources and power between the sexes and genders. Weber may have been the first to actively use the term patriarchy to analyze and describe forms of social organization. But its use was limited. He used it extensively to describe power relations between men and did not consider women in power structures. Feminists use the same concept of patriarchy to emphasize the structural subordination of women. While early feminists spoke of patriarchy as if it were a single homogeneous category that cuts across class, caste, race, and nationality, contemporary feminisms have argued that there are several and many of them. patriarchates that operate differently and have different intersections. It is important for us to take a critical look at Weber's conception of patriarchy from a feminist perspective. This part of the module is an exercise and illustration of the development of a critique of Weber from a feminist perspective.
Patriarchy
For Weber, patriarchy is formally defined as “a form of domination that is characteristic of the family group or family clan and economically organized. Patriarchy means 'the authority of the father, husband, eldest of the house... The 'Founding Father' or a connection in the distant past with a great or even divine connection or event which usually produces traditions untouchables who form the basis of the claim to power. When the prior association is with a deity, that deity may be male or female, but it is the male line through which power is claimed. (Sydia, p. 56)
Weber recognized patriarchy as a very important mode by which power structures and mechanisms of dominance and submission within traditional social structures are legitimized, and this legitimacy is conferred upon it by what is accepted as tradition. The authority traditionally vested in male members of a family, such as a father, husband or older brother, was the most obvious form taken by patriarchy, but it also functioned in establishing power equations in feudal societies where a ruler, an , a lord or master exercised his power over his subordinates or servants. Weber saw patriarchy as dominant in pre-modern societies with their greatest attachment to tradition and where such tradition-conferred power structures were not challenged by members of that group. The very fact that the patriarch was the "chosen one" meant that he could exercise his power without any restraint and without any contestation of his position by the group, because to challenge the patriarch's authority was to challenge the sanctity of secular rules accepted by the social group. Not only was the role of the patriarch within a social structure legitimized by the traditions of that society, but it also became the instrument for ensuring the continuation of this tradition. The patriarch's power was often seen to emanate from a divine source, making the tradition even more rigid and inviolable.
Weber, like Marx and Engels, finds the roots of patriarchy within a household or clan in the economic relations that existed within the household or clan, and in particular in the division of labor. Woman, whose sexuality was subject to the power of the patriarch, was constrained by prohibitions on sexual conduct and mores to function largely within the confines of the home, tending to the demands of domesticity which concerned the wearing and raising children turned. As Sydie puts it in her summary of Webber's position: "Since the dawn of organized society, with the formation of households, women have been subservient to men. The subordination of a woman to a man and the regulation of relations between household members are characteristics of an advanced patriarchal power relationship” (Sydie, p. 61). Conversely, the man's roles were largely outside the confines of the home, being a hunter, gatherer, or warrior and whose primary role within the household was to establish and perpetuate his rule. Weber believes this was true even in the very earliest forms of social organization and there was never a "female equivalent of the exercise of political power by men as a group over women as a group" (Sydie, p. 64), and , therefore, it is patriarchy that could be the first structure based on inequality and power.
Weber's view is problematic, however, because he then seeks to understand patriarchy in the context of an analysis of 'natural' or 'social' relationships in a household. For Weber, however, sociology itself is supposed to be concerned with social action, and this field is available for analysis, not naturalness. For Weber, the "mother-child" relationship is a purely natural relationship, and the "bearing/raising" function attributed to women is not social, but natural. He argues that for a family to continue to form a unit, the woman must assume the responsibilities of procreation and the socialization and upbringing of the child until "he" is able to support himself. his needs and to meet his needs. Weber views this mother-child relationship as natural and without social significance. This contrasts with the relationships that a man establishes with other men outside the confines of his own home, because patriarchal equations do not operate there and other processes take over that establish other hierarchies and other forms of domination.
These lead to ruler-ruled, master-slave, employer-employee relationships, and these are relationships that ultimately shape, through complex social, legal, and political processes, current social structures. Thus, while Weber recognizes the primacy of patriarchal rule in generating inequality in society, he legitimizes it by calling it "natural" and placing it altogether outside the realm of the "social." By making this division moot, Weber provides an oblique justification for the continuation of patriarchal rule and the superiority of man in society. In the process, what he calls "social" is completely degenderized, but nevertheless it is only men who inhabit this sphere of the social, while women are completely obliterated. What changes older forms of patriarchal rule for Weber are the processes of rationalization of modernity, and through these processes, he argued, status was replaced by contract, or as Winkler puts it: "Weber believed that women's status as oppressed members of a patriarchal family is replaced by its inferior bargaining power in contractual marriage" (Winkler, p. 3). But because of Weber's understanding of patriarchy itself as natural and not social, these changes can only be formal and always make reference to an underlying patriarchy that survives all these transformations. Weber's analysis is problematic in several respects and has been treated as such by many feminist critics. First, it simply does not provide a framework for understanding skewed gender relations at all within the family. While acknowledging that this is distorted, she simply accepts it as "natural," postulating a natural inferiority of women to men.
The issue of gender equality isn't there for him at all, so he doesn't need to look for ways to try to bring about that equality. Inequality is natural to him, so women cannot escape the trap of patriarchy. As Sydie puts it, "Weber's analysis obscures the nature of power in sexual relations and reinforces the idea that patriarchal forms are naturally and historically inevitable and immutable" (Sydie, p. 87).
Nor does he make a careful distinction between having children and raising children. While the first of these is the woman's responsibility due to biological inevitability, child rearing need not be the woman's sole responsibility. The idea of sharing the responsibility of raising children between the father and also other family members, such as grandparents and siblings, is something Weber doesn't even consider.
But on the other hand, as the child grows up and begins to develop as a social being, his relationship to society is mediated by the father and not by the mother. It is the father who gives the child social and legal legitimacy and the relationship of the child to his parents. The mother-child relationship is also something to which the father gives legitimacy. Nor is Weber's model of the formation of social systems from the divisions initially imposed by patriarchy easily reconcilable with the fact that, despite the patriarchal modes that prevail in society, women often play an important role in social institutions and are active actors in many processes are. This could happen for a variety of factors that are not encompassed in the social. For example, there could be economic factors driving this phenomenon, ranging from simple survival to land tenure and property issues. By removing women from this space where important social interactions take place, Weber is unable to explain these more complex phenomena that one encounters when studying societies.
Despite these limitations, Weber's analysis of patriarchal power and authority is both original and useful. While his emphasis on the naturalness of gender inequality was flawed, later sociologists owe much to Weber's understanding of power and domination. Feminists in particular owe much to Weber's conception of sociology itself, not as an objective discipline, as positivists would have it, but as a study necessarily influenced by ideology. It was this Weberian challenge to positivism that enabled feminist scholars to understand the ideological underpinnings of sociology itself, as a patriarchal and masculine enterprise.
Conclusion
Feminism's relationship to Weber is complex. While there are ways to make connections and continuities with a Weberian methodology, as we discussed in Part 1 of this article, it becomes necessary to critically evaluate its substantive sociology, as we did in Part 2. Either Weber or feminisms. We aimed to raise issues that arise in the shaping of a feminist sociology while critiquing and establishing continuity with the work of Max Weber.
References and Reading List
- Abbott, P., Wallace, C. and Tyler, M. 1990, An Introduction to Sociology: Feminist Perspectives. Oxford: Routledge.
- Harding, S. 1990. ‘Feminism, Science and the Anti-Enlightenment Critiques.’ In Feminism/Postmodernism, edited by Nicholson, L.J., 83-106. New York: Routledge, Chapman and Hill.
- Mills, C. W. 1959, The Sociological Imagination. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Rege, S. 2003. Sociology of Gender: The Challenge of Feminist Sociological Knowledge. New Delhi: Sage Publications
Comments