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SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1Slides: Tonnies, Tarde, Veblen

Ferdinand Tonnies (1855-1936)

His father was a wealthy farmer. He studied at several German universities, eventually becoming a Professor at the University of Keil. He taught there until 1933 when he was dismissed by the Nazis due to his writings against them. He wrote more than 900 books and articles over the years. But he is still best known for his Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, first published in 1887. Those words are usually translated as Community and Society. It’s the best we can do, but it’s not an exact translation. If you speak more than one language, then you probably know that sometimes it’s almost impossible to translate a word from one language to another. You can try, but some meaning is lost in translation. So it is with Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. Community and Society is best.

Our textbook, and Tonnies, emphasize human will. That part is not good. But let’s try to look at Gemeinschaft and Gesselschaft without that. Tonnies is getting at the idea that there are two types of societies and two types of human social relationships.

GEMEINSCHAFT GESELLSCHAFT

Small Large

Family is important Contract is important

Traditional Rational

Common, customary laws Laws from government

Religious Secular

Few subcultures Many subcultures

People much alike People very different

People know each other well Most people we don’t know

Little Social Mobility Much social mobility possible

People’s beliefs unite them People often different from each other

Not much change Can changes rapidly

Notice gemeinschaft is like a small town where everyone knows everyone else, and gesellschaft is similar to a big city, like New York.

Tonnies was interested in social change. He insisted that population growth helps produce the fact that modern society is becoming more and more gesellschaft like.

But even in a big city, like New York, there can be neighborhoods that are more gemeinschaft like. Maybe you know places like that.

So does this make sense: There can be gemeinschaft like areas in a gesellschaft, but there cannot be gesellschaft areas within a gemeinschaft. If it does, you’re okay.

NOTE: This is similar to Mechanical and Organic Solidarity.

Gabriel Tarde

Jean-Gabriel Tarde (March 12, 1843 – May 13, 1904), was a French sociologist, criminologist, and now considered a founder of social psychology. He opposed the dominant sociological model of his time, Emile Durkheim’s. Durkheim insisted that sociology must begin with the study of social groups not the individual. Tarde, on the other hand, emphasized the importance of the individual; that sociological principles must be grounded in psychology, in psychological interactions among individuals. Tarde insisted that sociology study the inter-mental aspects of man, or man insofar as he is influenced by other men. For many years Tarde was chiefly remembered as the man who lost the debate with Durkheim. However, today Tarde is recognized as a founder of Social Psychology and modern Criminology.

Life

Gabriel Tarde was born March 12, 1843 in Sarlat, east of Bordeaux, France. He was the son of a military officer, attorney, and judge. His father was 44 when he married Gabriel’s mother, Anne-Aline Roux, who was 19. Gabriel was their only child. His father died when he was only 7, and he was raised by his mother, to whom he remained exceptionally close throughout her life. He was educated in a Jesuit school in Sarlat, obtaining training in Latin, Greek, history, and mathematics. From ages 19-25 he suffered from an eye disease which limited his activity. He followed his mother’s wishes and became an attorney. From 1869 to 1894 he held a series of court posts in and around Sarlat. He married Marthe Bardy-Delisle in 1877, with whom he had three children. By the 1890s he had written articles and books on sociology and criminology and was well known. In 1891 his mother died and he left Sarlat and settled in Paris. In 1894 he was named Director of Criminal Statistics in Paris. He held virtually every position open to a French social scientist. In the last year of his life he planned to undertake a series of social psychological studies on school children, but the eye disease of his youth returned and he died in Paris in 1904 at age 61.

Work

Tarde insisted that three distinctive, yet interrelated processes characterize human society – Invention, Imitation, and Opposition. He wrote on those processes in his 1898 Les lois sociales (Social Laws).

Invention, according to Tarde, is the source of all progress. Inventions are the creations of talented individuals, and are disseminated throughout society by Imitation. However, only one percent of people can make creative associations. Tarde believed that social factors can contribute to inventiveness. For example, more coherent ties and better communication among gifted individuals can lead to mutual stimulation, resulting in greater flow of new ideas.

Imitation, Some inventions or discoveries, are more easily accepted than others. The more similar are inventions to those already imitated, the more likely they are to be imitated. The more an invention is consistent with the culture, the more likely it is to be imitated. Inventions descends from superior to inferior groups. But in his The Laws of Imitation, he offers no specific definition of the term. In the preface to the second edition, he refers to a “quasi-photographic reproduction of a cerebral image,” which did not clarify matters.

Tarde codified his ideas in his “three laws of imitation:”

1. The Law of Close Contact – this law explains that people have a greater tendency to imitate the fashions and behaviors of those around them. If one is constantly surrounded by deviant behavior, one is more likely to imitate that type of behavior than any other. Direct contact with deviance fosters more deviance. Tarde thought that as society becomes denser, people will start to imitate each other more.

2. The Law of Imitation by Superiors by Inferiors – this explains that imitation spreads from the top down – consequently youngsters imitate older people, poor imitate the rich, peasants imitate royalty and so on. Perhaps people imitate high-status people in hopes that their imitative behavior will gain some of the rewards associated with being in a ‘superior’ class. Question from today’s perspective: Does knowledge of deviant behavior of ‘superior’ persons, such as high government officials and corporate executives, increase the likelihood of deviance by us all?

3. Law of Insertion – means that new acts and behaviors are superimposed on old ones and subsequently either reinforce or extinguish previous behavior. For example, if criminals start to use a new type of weapon, they will not use the old one any more. Another example would be a new custom replacing an older one, or DVD replacing VHS.

Opposition this takes place when two or more inventions come into contact with each other, or when new and old ideas collide. Oppositions, or conflict, may be associated with social groups, regions, or social classes. This leads to adaptation which leads to progress.

Criminology

Tarde left significant influence in the area of criminology. Tarde opposed the extreme biological ideas of Cesare Lombrosso and his school of criminology. Lombrosso claimed that criminality was inherited and that biological dispositions lead one to become a criminal. Tarde, on the other hand, claimed that the environment played a significant role in causing criminal behavior. He insisted that his ‘three laws of imitation’ can explain why people engage in crime.

Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) Economist, sociologist and critic of capitalism

Born in Wisconsin of Norwegian immigrant parents. He did not learn English until he was a teenager. Attended different schools and received his Ph.D. from Yale University. He had to struggle to keep a college teaching position because of his rough manners, opposition to organized religion, and that he did not like working with students. Veblen is best known for his book The Theory of the Leisure Class.

His central idea is opposition between those who make goods and those who make money. Those who make goods move society forward. People are what they do. Those who do nothing but try to make more and more money are growing fat and rich on the technological work and advances of others. They are parasites. They are the Leisure Class. Those who have as their goal to make money retard and destroy progress. Social life today is based more on how much money you have rather than the technological advances you produced by working. But these technological inventions move society forward. He introduced terms:

Conspicuous Consumption – wealthy buy expensive items to display their wealth, they want to be obvious and let everyone know how rich they are

Conspicuous Leisure – take long vacations to exotic places and make sure everyone knows what they’re doing

SUMMARY:

KEY IDEAS:

Tonnies: Gemeinschaft and Geselschaft

Tarde: Imitation, Social Psychology, Criminology

Veblen: Technology