Randall Collins

Functional and Conflict Theories of Educational Stratification.

Two theories are considered in accounting for the increased schooling required for employment in advanced industrial society: (a) a technical-function theory, stating that educational requirements reflect the demands for greater skills on the job due to technological change; and (b) a conflict theory, stating that employment requirements reflect the efforts of competing status groups to monopolize or dominate jobs by imposing their cultural standards on the selection process. A review of the evidence indicates that the conflict theory is more strongly supported. The main dynamic of rising educational requirements in the United States has been primarily the expansion of mobility opportunities through the school system, rather than autonomous changes in the structure of employment. It is argued that the effort to build a comprehensive theory of stratification is best advanced by viewing those effects of technological change on educational requirements that are substantiated within the basic context of a conflict theory of stratification.

The Sociology of Philosophies A Précis

A chapter-by-chapter précis is presented of Randall Collins’s book, The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change. It presents a sociological theory of intellectual networks that connect thinkers in chains of masters and pupils, colleagues and rivals, and of the internalized conversations that constitute the social processes of thinking. The theory is used to analyze long-term developments of the intellectual communities of philosophers in ancient Greece, ancient and medieval China and India, medieval and modern Japan, medieval Islam and Judaism, medieval Christendom, and modern Europe through the early 20th century.

Emotional Energy as the Common Denominator of Rational Action

A solution is proposed to several long-standing problems in the theory of rational social action: emotional or altruistic behavior that escapes cost/benefit calculations; the lack of a common metric among different spheres of action; and naturalistic evidence that choice in real-life situations involves little calculation. Emotional, symbolic, and value-oriented behavior is determined by a social mechanism, the dynamics of interaction rituals (IRs). Because IRs vary in the amount of solidarity they provide, and in their costs of participating, there is a market for ritual participation that shapes the distribution of individual behavior. IRs generate a variable level of emotional energy (EE) in each individual over time, and EE operates as the common denominator in terms of which choices are made among alternative courses of action. Individuals apportion their investments in work and in ritual participation to maximize their overall flow of EE. The economy of participating in interaction rituals shapes individual motivation for participating in the economy of material goods and services. Microsituational cognition is determined by the EE and the cognitive symbols generated by IRs, bringing about the tendency to narrow the range of alternatives that are consciously focused upon in choice situations. Nevertheless, the aggregation of microsituations is subject to interactional markets, which gives individuals a rational trajectory in the medium-run drift of behavior.

Weber's Last Theory of Capitalism: A Systematization

A systematic formulation is given of Webers theory of the origins of large-scale capitalism, based upon the lectures given just before his death. This last theory is predominantly institutional, unlike the emphasis upon religious ideas and motivations in his early Protestant Ethic thesis, and unlike his analyses of the world religions. Webers institutional theory involves a sequence of causal conditions. The outcome of the sequence is capitalism characterized by the entrepreneurial organization of capital, rationalized technology, free labor, and unrestrained markets. Intermediate conditions are a calculable legal system and an economic ethic combining universal commercialization with the moderate pursuit of repetitive gains. These conditions are fostered by the bureaucratic state and by legal citizenship, and more remotely by a complex of administrative, military, and religious factors. The overall pattern is one in which numerous elements must be balanced in continuous conflict if economic development is to take place. Weber derived much of this scheme in explicit confrontation with Marxism. His conflict theory criticizes as well as deepens and extends a number of Marxian themes, including a theory of international capitalism which both criticizes and complements Wallersteins theory of the world system.

Rituals of Solidarity and Security in the Wake of Terrorist Attack

Conflict produces group solidarity in four phases: (1) an initial few days of shock and idiosyncratic individual reactions to attack; (2) one to two weeks of establishing standardized displays of solidarity symbols; (3) two to three months of high solidarity plateau; and (4) gradual decline toward normalcy in six to nine months. Solidarity is not uniform but is clustered in local groups supporting each others symbolic behavior. Actual solidarity behaviors are performed by minorities of the population, while vague verbal claims to performance are made by large majorities. Commemorative rituals intermittently revive high emotional peaks; participants become ranked according to their closeness to a center of ritual attention. Events, places, and organizations claim importance by associating themselves with national solidarity rituals and especially by surrounding themselves with pragmatically ineffective security ritual. Conflicts arise over access to centers of ritual attention; clashes occur between pragmatists deritualizing security and security zealots attempting to keep up the level of emotional intensity. The solidarity plateau is also a hysteria zone; as a center of emotional attention, it attracts ancillary attacks unrelated to the original terrorists as well as alarms and hoaxes. In particular historical circumstances, it becomes a period of atrocities.

Why the social sciences won't become high-consensus, rapid-discovery science

A research front of rapid discovery, leaving a trail of cognitive consensus behind it, is characteristic of natural sciences since about the 17th century in Europe. The basis of this high-consensus, rapid-discovery science is not empiricism, since empirical research existed in the natural sciences before the 17th century. The key is appropriation of genealogies of research technologies, which are pragmatically manipulated and modified to produce new phenomena; high consensus results because there is higher social prestige in moving ahead to new research discoveries than by continuing to dispute the interpretation of older discoveries. The social sciences have not acquired this pattern of rapid discovery with high consensus behind the research front. Their fundamental disability is not lack of empirical research, nor failure to adhere to a scientific epistemology, nor the greater ideological controversy that surrounds social topics. What is fundamentally lacking in the social sciences is a genealogy of research technology, whose manipulation reliably produces new phenomena and a rapidly moving research front. Unless the social sciences invent new research hardware, they will likely never acquire much consensus or rapid discovery. Possibilities may exist for such development stemming from research technologies in microsociology and in artificial intelligence.

A Conflict Theory of Sexual Stratification

Employment discrimination against women is explained as the result of a distinctive system of stratification by sex. The fundamental bases of sexual stratification are human sexual drives in conjunction with male physical dominance. Variations in the social organization of violence and of economic markets determine the resources available to men and women in the struggle for control, and condition prevailing ideologies about sexuality. Historical changes in sexual roles are explained as results of shifts in these resources.

Sociology: Proscience or Antiscience?

Criticisms of the scientific status of sociology possess some validity when applied against narrowly positivist interpretations of sociological methods and metatheory, but do not undermine the scientific project offormulating generalized explanatory models. (1) Critics allege that sociology has made no lawful findings; but valid general principles exist in many areas. (2) Situational interpretation, subjectivity, reflexivity, and emergence are alleged to undermine explanatory sociology, but these topics themselves can be explained by a widened conception of science that allows informal procedures in theorizing aimed at maximizing explanatory coherence. (3) The fact that intellectual discourse itself is a historically changeable social product does not invalidate objective explanatory knowledge. (4) The historicist claim that there can be no principles that hold across particular times and places is invalid and rests upon a confusion of underlying generative principles with the complexities of the empirical surface of history. (5) Metatheoretical criticism of the concept of causality does not undermine a sophisticated conception of scientific sociology. Sociological knowledge can and does advance, but it depends upon building the coherence of theoretical conceptions across different areas and methods of research.

TOWARD AN INTEGRATED THEORY OF GENDER STRATIFICATION

Determinants of gender stratification range through every institutional sphere and every level of sociological analysis. An integrated theory is presented which charts the connections and feedbacks among three main blocks of causal factors and two blocks of outcomes. The GENDER ORGANIZATION OF PRODUCTION block includes the degree of compatibility between productive and reproductive labor, and determinants of the gender segregation of productive labor (including flows from other blocks). The GENDER ORGANIZATION OF REPRODUCTION includes demographic conditions, the social control of reproductive technologies, and the class and gender organization of parenting. SEXUAL POLITICS includes historical variations in family alliance politics, erotic status markets, and violent male groups. On the outcome side, GENDER RESOURCE MOBILIZATION centers on gender income and property, household organization, sexual coercion, and the distinctiveness of gender cultures. GENDER CONFLICTS involve the conditions for both gender movements and counter-movements, which feed back into the prior blocks of causal conditions. Despite rises in womens gender resources in recent decades, it is likely that gender conflicts will go on in new forms. An integrated theory makes it possible to examine alternative scenarios and policies of change in gender stratification of the future.

Some Comparative Principles of Educational Stratification.

During the 1950s and early 1960s functionalism, which held that education socializes the young and provides socially necessary technical skills, provided the dominant explanation for the genesis and role of educational systems. In the late 1960s, various neo-Marxist positions appeared which pointed to educations role in maintaining class inequality. Drawing on the work of Max Weber, Randall Collins proposes to move beyond both types of explanation by demonstrating the role of three sources of demand for education—the demand of individuals for practical skills, the desire of groups for social solidarity and high status, and the concern of states for effective political control. These sources and their consequences can be conceptualized as operating within a market for cultural goods which behaves much like the market for economic goods.