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Social Structure: History of the Concept
Social Structure: History of the Concept Charles Crothers, School of Social Sciences and Public Policy, AUT University, Auckland, New Zealand Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract Although the palpably powerful nature of social structures and their effects seems obvious, it has taken social scientists – and particularly sociologists – a long time to develop adequate conceptions that both are philosophically defensible and also lead to empirical research. During the ‘golden age’ (in the late nineteenth century and for much of the twentieth century) of social structural analysis, rather underdeveloped ideas of social structure were, nonetheless, pressed into highly effective service in analyzing actual structures and this continues. Alongside these actual analyses, more sophisticated understandings have evolved although this area of study is still not adequately consolidated.
Introduction: Basics Social structure is a concept and term used to capture the collective properties exhibited by social entities and to identify the characteristics of and specify the relationships among their component elements. It is widely considered to be one of the most important concepts/terms in the social sciences and a particularly central concept/term in sociology and important in other social sciences. However, writing on social structure has been scattered, piecemeal, and not particularly cumulative. Strangely, social theorists have been reticent in making their analyses of social structure more explicit (Callinicos, 2007; Crothers, 1996; López and Scott, 2000; Chew and Knottnerus, 2002). There are at least four primordial images of social structure, which have to be somewhat separately attended to, although for adequate understanding each must be evoked: Social Organization: Social structure is the concrete relations among concrete individuals and concrete groups, e.g., Networks. Social Background Characteristics: Social structure is the relations among people sharing the same social background characteristics, or differing in terms of social background characteristics. Institutional Structures: Social structure is the relations among people, categories, etc. laid down by ongoing organizations and cultural forms. Underlying (Deep) Social Structures: Social structures exist (somewhat irrespective of the actions of those ‘carrying’ them) at deeper (and more abstract) levels. With all these, they both constrain the possibilities for social activity and provide a structured range of opportunities.
originated . in seventeenth and eighteenth century botany, from which they spread to other natural and social sciences.” However, Raymond Williams, in his Keywords (1983), provides a rather more lengthy account of the linguistic history. The earliest usages of ‘structure’ in the fifteenth century referred to the process of building. By the seventeenth century, it referred to both the whole product and the manner of construction – the meaning emphasized the inner structure: the arrangements among constituent parts. The term was used about the anatomy, as a contrast to the functioning (or performance), of a body part. In the 1870s, usages contrasted internal arrangements and (surface) decoration. In the twentieth century in linguistics, and then other social sciences, structure signaled an analytical or formal study rather than a comparative/historical or process approach (which had been more appropriate for the study of more familiar European social structures). There are similar complexities in the meanings of related terms such as form and system. He also notes that “much structuralist analysis is formalist in the sense of separating form and content and giving form priority” (Williams, 1983: p. 306). There is also a somewhat separate history of the concept of ‘the social’ which is seen to have arisen as a distinctive order or domain of social reality through various eighteenth century discourses, which theorized and reflected on this order. ‘The social’ outflanked the more usual social categories up to that time: e.g., the polity, stratificational orders, etc. Its death is seen as arising as it is replaced by a virtual reality comprising signs and symbols seemingly detached from material reality. Social structure can be conceptualized as particularly embedded within this domain. Phases in Development of the Concept: Each of the successive ‘cohorts’ of social structural models is schematically outlined in Table 1.
The ‘Language’ of Social and Structure The Prehistory of Concepts of Social Structure According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Alex de Tocqueville was the first to use the term ‘social structure,’ followed by Herbert Spencer in 1872 and then references in the 1940s (Meyer Fortes), and 1960s (Claude Levi-Strauss). Perhaps it is a quite definitive indicator that the term really did not begin to be widespreadly deployed until well into the nineteenth century. William Sewell Jr. (2005) cites Michel Foucault to suggest that ‘structure’ is a general metaphor and that “such usages
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 22
There clearly is a ‘prehistory’ of concepts of social structure. Several writers have drawn attention to the collectivist aspects of social theory in Greek, Roman, Arab, Medieval, and Renaissance thought. After these periods of social thought, a strong individualism was built into the models of the classical political economists (such as the Scottish school) which clearly limited their interest in social structure. However, over the
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Table 1
Phases in social structural thinking
Approach
Time-period
‘Prehistory’ Founding fathers British structural–functional anthropology American structural–functional sociology Inter-regnum Structuralism ‘Process’ reconceptualizations Poststructuralism/post-post-structuralism
Pre-1890 1890–1920 1920–50 1950–65 1965–75 1975–85 1985–95 1995–present
several centuries of the ‘Enlightenment Project,’ qualified holistic viewpoints of the social also evolved. Nevertheless, one of the major lessons in the history of social thought is that the extraction of conceptions, both which are social (i.e., not essentially political, or even economic) and which also involve analytical, scientific treatment of the collective properties of social entities, are hard won. Moreover, progress at developing working theoretical models of social structure was slow, in some considerable part because of the lack of development of institutionalized traditions of social theoretical work. In Donald Levine’s (1995) treatment of the Hellenic tradition in sociology, he analyses the approach used by Aristotle to study how the good life might be achieved. Although its moral purpose was paramount, nevertheless Aristotle’s was a grounded inquiry. It involved examining the natures of these entities and the reasons why they arose. Aristotle identified the three forms of association: l
households (in which people join together for the sakes of reproduction and of self-preservation); l villages; and l city-states (to allow expression of discourse about bad and good, and as the culmination of the social life of its components) especially as represented by their constitutions. Aristotle then analyzed variation among political communities in terms of their internal relationships between governing and subject strata. “The constitutive elements of associational domains are their role sets and the resources available to them (e.g., husband–wife, parent–child, master–slave, master–inanimate possession relationships in the household, and ruler–ruled relationships in the political community). Responsibilities for each role–position are specified, together with the type of socialization he deemed necessary to cultivate the best qualities required in the carrying out of those responsibilities” (Levine, 1995: p. 118). Aristotle utilized his dataset of the constitutions of more than 150 communities to examine the best sources for regime stability, especially as appropriate to communities of different sizes and socioeconomic compositions. Various scattered attempts at social structural analysis occurred thereafter. One of the more notable was that of the medieval Muslim philosopher Ibn Khaldun, who produced an interesting sociology of the cyclical variation of social forms in the Arab world. Charles-Louis Montesquieu in the mideighteenth century and then Jean-Jacques Rousseau continued
the focus on political forms but began to show how these are embedded within broader societal, and particularly geographical, features. French social thinkers saw social structures as things, shaped by laws, arranged into hierarchies, which had development trajectories and were composed of interdependent cultural and social structures. An historical sociology of the evolutionary development of societies was most developed by the eighteenth century Scottish philosophers in their ‘Four Stages Theory’ of progression of types of society – hunting, pasturage, agriculture, and commerce. This broad framework was extended and deepened by other writers. Spencer provided the culmination of this framework in his work, based on considerable secondary analysis, the internal processes within societies, and their stages of evolution. Spencer visualized each stage as being denoted by (1) a given degree of differentiation between regulatory, operative, and distributive processes and (2) a level of differentiation within each process. He saw five basic stages in terms of their complexity: (1) simple without head (leadership), (2) simple with head (leadership), (3) compound, (4) double compound, and (5) treble compound.
Classical Social Structural Analysis Some general notions about social structure – which C.W. Mills (1960) later termed the ‘Classical Tradition’ of sociology – gradually developed during the course of the nineteenth century as a by-product of historical studies, although it was also used in political analysis and social commentary, albeit not much connected up with social research in the narrower sense. This model included “. basic conceptions or theories of such matters as social stratification and political authority, of the nature of bureaucracy and of capitalism, of the scale and drift of modern life, of the ambiguity of rationality, of the malaise individual men so often feel” (1960: p. 5). Such classical sociological analyses focus on at least one social grouping set within a wider social formation. These social groupings often have a particular economic role, hold power, or are centrally involved with cultural development or cultural maintenance, such as social classes, estates, broad political movements, or the ‘intelligentsia.’ The historical trajectory of the grouping: its rise, continuance, and fall are examined together with the grouping’s terminology (especially its own names for itself), internal positions, and external boundary maintenance; its economic base, political power, and cultural legitimacy; its demography; its social and ritual life; its relations to other social groupings, and the leadership, organizations, and networks through which it is organized and can mobilize to achieve any common goals. Tocqueville is an early structural analyst who suggested that through their voluntary associating, for joint interests, both publicly and privately, Americans are able to overcome selfish individualism and to create both an active political society and an active civil society independent from the state. However, such structural analyses were not underpinned by a formal theory. None of the now-recognized Founding Fathers of Sociology had a well-developed and explicit model of social structure, but a semi-implicit model of social structure was
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central within the work of each. For Marx and Weber in particular, this particularly focused on class structure.
Marx The main thrust of Marx’s later work lay in understanding the economic machinery of capitalism. His ‘sociology’ is both embedded within or envelops his ‘political economy’: Marx saw social life being lived within ‘social formations,’ composed of various economic, social, and political groupings: especially social classes which shaped the individuals involved with them. At the center of each social formation is,
The specific economic form, in which unpaid surplus-labor is pumped out of direct producers, determines the relationship of rulers and ruled, as it grows directly out of production itself and in turn reacts upon it as a determining element. Upon this, however, is founded the formation of the economic community which grows out of the production relations themselves, thereby determining simultaneously its specific political form. It is always the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers–a relationship always naturally corresponding with a definite stage in the development of the methods of labor and thereby its social productivity–which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden base of the entire social structure, and with it the political form of the relationship of sovereignty and dependence, in short, the corresponding specific form of the state. (Marx, 1981: 791)
The State (as the executive committee of the ruling or dominant class) ensured social cohesion and cloaked capitalist society in a blanket of false consciousness, which hid the way in which society was organized in the ruling classes’ interests. In addition, Marx depicted the dynamics of the whole formation which centered on the extent to which such social groupings and particularly social classes might cohere sufficiently to exert a social force in their own right. An important difference is that between a class-in-itself (not aware of the shared nature of its material interests) and a class-for-itself (which is aware of its shared interests and has some organizational capacity for realizing these). A critical element in building the conflict necessary for an eventual revolution is the dissipation of the cloying false consciousness, and its replacement with a revolutionary consciousness. In turn, the dynamics of structural change are placed within a much wider historical framework, in which the successive developments of different modes of production are placed within a sequence. In a general way, ancient (slave), medieval (feudal), and modern (capitalist) modes are seen as part of an evolutionary sequence, with the capitalist mode (and perhaps deformed feudal peasant modes) leading on to the subsequent stage of a socialist mode of production. Societal change is seen as driven by the interaction between organizational arrangements in the economy (relations of production) and technology (productive forces).
Weber Weber’s views (see especially 1947) on social structure are more developed than those of Marx, and his theoretical reflections directly pertain to social structure. Nevertheless,
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Weber does not attempt to develop a full understanding of social structures. Rather, his tools of structural analysis are designed to assist in the analysis of those portions of historical experience, in which he had a particular interest. On the other hand, his work is cast within a very broad comparative and historical range: encompassing study of Western, Chinese, Indian, and Ancient civilizations. A central point is ‘methodological individualism’ requiring explanations in terms of the involvement of individuals and also need to meet the criteria of providing objective as well as meaningful explanation. Weber’s approach to social structure, including social classes, is much more flexible than Marx’s. A class is seen as any social grouping which shares a similar position within a market (e.g., the labor market), with ‘similar position’ meaning that its members share similar life-chances. Rather than emphasizing only the economic/material sphere, Weber sees several dimensions around which social strata might form: class (concerned with economic matters), party (concerned with power), and status group (concerned with social prestige or honor). Finally, Weber provided a particularly potent model of organizational analysis (and social structural analysis more generally) with his theoretical model of a bureaucracy. He depicted this as a ‘machine’ of hierarchically organized ‘offices’ filled by meritocratically appointed, salaried, careerist ‘officials’ who are constrained to efficiently tackle their collective tasks within a systematic framework of rules, records, and reporting.
Durkheim Of the three (major) founding fathers of sociology, Durkheim was the one most seriously concerned with social structure. However, even for Durkheim, the precise term is used only in passing, and references are made more generally to society, and to the social bonds constituting society. Durkheim was aggressively antireductionist and collectivist in approach. The concept of a ‘social fact’ was central, and social facts were seen as separate from, and overwhelming the individual. Social facts are a framework of collectively shared obligations on the individual, involving either ‘crystallized’ (e.g., expressed in adages or writing) or more diffuse ‘social currents.’ Usually the collective shaping of a person is internalized and constant pressure is not needed. Such social pressure is felt most when a person resists obligations. This results in conformity to them because social groups or the State upholds them. At a more descriptive level, Durkheim developed a conception of social morphology involving accounts of the nature (e.g., size, functions), number, arrangement (e.g., spatial distribution), and interrelations (e.g., modes of communication, movement, and mutual obligation) among the social parts (individual or collective) of a society. Durkheim clearly postulated that the central conceptual problem on analyzing social structures was its ‘division of labor,’ and the consequence for the structure’s type and level of social integration. Whereas primitive social structures were seen as organized around similarity in their task structures, which was complemented by a tight ‘repressive’ social control, more complex societies had a division of labor characterized by complementary specialization, and this was then matched by a system of social control which emphasized ‘restitution.’
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Simmel Of other sociologists in the ‘founding’ generation, the work of Simmel has proved to be of lasting significance. Simmel developed a ‘formal’ sociology (as opposed to sociological treatment of ‘content’), in which properties of small groups and social situations were seen to affect the behavior. His approach could allow the compilation of systematic propositions about the operation of social structures. For example, Simmel wrote about the effects of differences in sizes of groups for interaction among their members. The conception of abstracting social content in order to reveal structural similarities across diverse situations also proved to be helpful to later analysts. Diverse social groups may nevertheless show identical forms of behavior toward one another on the part of individual members – relationships such as superiority and subordination, competition, division of labor, formation of parties, representation, and inner solidarity coupled with exclusiveness toward the outside can be found in the state, in a religious community, in a band of conspirators, kin, in an economic association, in an art school, and in the family. Simmel’s imagery of the way in which people in modern societies are complexly related was through cross-cutting social circles, as opposed to the concentric circles of more primordial situations.
Structuralist Approaches British Structural–Functional Anthropology Beginning in the 1910s, and maturing in the immediate postWorld War I period, a self-conscious analytical approach to social structural analysis was developed by the British school of structural–functional anthropologists. This was begun by Malinowski, but predominantly shaped by Radcliffe-Brown (1957), and later summarized in a wider range of texts (e.g., Nadel’s theoretical treatise: 1957). Earlier approaches in which emphasis was placed on the evolution and diffusion of cultural traits were rejected in favor of understanding the current operation of small-scale societies (and later, rather larger African ones). Any social practice was seen in terms of its ‘role’ within its societal context, which enabled ‘Strange’ tribal practices to be ‘mapped onto’ more commonly understood Western concepts. This approach was considerably inspired by Durkheim’s views on social collectivities. There were at least two main strands, with Malinowski endeavoring to reach down to the ways in which societies met the sociobiological needs of their members, while RadcliffeBrown emphasized a more strictly social structural level of analysis. The latter approach came to dominate in structural analyses but the theme of how individuals relate to social structures reoccurs in later views and debates.
American Structural–Functional Sociology During the 1950s and 1960s, American sociology was dominated by an approach generally labeled as ‘structuralfunctionalist,’ or (retrospectively) to use Mullins’s (1973) term as ‘Standard American Sociology’ (SAS). To a considerable extent, this involved a translation of British structural–functional anthropology into the then-contemporary and larger scale American context. Although the functional mode of
explanation (in terms of consequences, especially for environing social systems) continued, as with its anthropological predecessor, the inherent teleology has been later resisted, although functional analyses can still be seen as a useful heuristic approach for generating hypotheses. There was a strong and consistent attention to the analysis of social structure through concepts such as ‘role theory’ and ‘social system’ and others. Another path lays in the development of research tools more appropriate to the investigation of the structures of large-scale societies, especially large-scale surveys. Theoretical and methodological advances often benefited each other. A range of standard social background variables was deployed in surveys, which were useful in predicting patterns of behaviors or attitudes. As Merton (1949) pointed out, these social background variables reflected the main social statuses which people might occupy. While much of this sociology retained a strong interest in characteristics of individuals (or patterns among various of the properties of individuals) which the survey research methodology made possible, surveys were also employed to study the ‘emergent’ or ‘structural’ characteristics of various types of social unit such as groups, households/families, organizations, suburbs, regions, and nations. As well, considerable theoretical and methodological knowledge accumulated about how relations between individuals and various types of social entities might best be studied and explained. A useful example is the Lazarsfeld typology of the different types of individual and collective properties, in which individuals can influence other individuals or collectivities and in turn collectivities can shape individuals or other collectivities. At a more macrosociological level, analyses of which social dimensions (social cleavages) were more salient in describing patterns of societal development and operation. For example, societies with cross-cutting cleavages were more likely not to be crippled by major conflicts since the widespread sharing of interests held in common by ‘parties,’ which stood in different positions in relation to a dispute, is likely to dampen its socially destructive effect. Comparative historical sociologists studied questions such as the degree of support for left-wing political movements, finding their explanations in terms of other features of the social structure: for example, lack of socialist development in USA was seen as flowing from the (supposedly) quite open-ended texture of the American social structure, and especially the possibility that upward mobility might be achieved by all. The ‘human ecology’ aspects of the 1920s Chicago school of sociology were formalized by Duncan and Schnore into a ‘POET’ framework, which analyzed the interrelations among Population, Organization, Environment, and Technology (see also Hawley, 1986). This schema usefully pointed to the natural environment context of social structures and some of the key elements which shaped their long-term operations. Role theory was an important conceptual foundation stone. Often the concept was used generally and descriptively to indicate that social life was socially patterned. In some theoretical approaches, emphasis was laid on the way roles and their occupants were shaped by social learning and monitoring by role-others, rather than as in the ‘symbolic interactionist’ formulation in which role-occupant’s orientation to their role was stressed. Panoply of role-related concepts piled up
Social Structure: History of the Concept (e.g., Merton’s status-and-role theory which allowed finer conceptual discriminations).
Parsons The ‘grand theoretical’ work of Parsons endeavored to lay down a solid conceptual foundation and standard vocabulary for the social sciences, in particular, anthropology, sociology, and social psychology (e.g., 1973). The three interlinked master concepts – culture, social systems, and personality – are held to be separate, autonomous, and yet interpenetrating analytical systems. A social system is seen as the interaction of the plurality of persons and their relationships, with its central building block being that of the role. Roles are a sliver of someone’s personality, but are more than this in that they also stand outside the personality. Roles constitute and govern the interaction between people – each in their respective roles – through providing complementary and mutually adjusting sets of expectations. Many roles are ‘institutionalized’ by being built into wider cultural patterns and controlled by social sanctions. However, the social system seems to be a residual concept and the cultural determinism is so overwhelming that there is little room left for autonomous social activity.
French Structuralism During the late 1960s, two forms of structural analysis – both drawing inspiration from Marxism, and both emanating from Paris – captured much attention. Despite their relatively brief span of popularity, both marked out the extremes of a ‘structural determinist’ approach. For French anthropological theorist Claude Levi-Strauss, “The term ‘social structure’ has nothing to do with empirical reality but with models built up after it” (1963). Indeed, the drive of his analysis is to show how styles of ‘native’ thinking (in whichever culture is being studied) across all areas of cultural and social life are all embedded within deep semilinguistic patterns of thinking (possibly even mentalistic, being hard-wired into the digital structure of the brain). Thus, ‘native’ concepts of kinship patterns, religious ideology, and all else is subsumed under broad models of thinking that eventually reduce down, via transformation rules, into dualities dwelling in the mind. Levi-Straus’s approach showed mind-stretching linkages, such as postulated themes running through the entire range of North American tribal cultures, but it seemed to falter in the hands of others. The other structuralist development, which peaked at much the same time, was centered on the work of social philosopher Louis Althusser. In this approach of ‘structural Marxism,’ Marx was (re)interpreted to fit a highly determinist and scientific understanding of social development. Marx’s model of the working of the capitalist economy was accepted as adequate and instead, attention focused on two consequent issues: l
How Marxism might be construed to offer satisfactory explanations of societies other than capitalist ones (and indeed to provide a theorized sequence of types of society)? l How the whole of a society was to be seen as operating? A threefold distinction is assembled: society is seen as comprising the economy, the polity, and the ideological state apparatus. The functional role of the latter two sectors
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is to repress the population, by force and by imposing ideological consensus, into supporting the status quo set by the current mode of economic organization. A society can be described by which of the three structures is dominant; but no matter which is the dominant structure, it is always the economic structure that determines which is dominant: the economy is the determinant ‘in the last instance.’ In capitalism, the economy is the main institution, whereas earlier societies had been dominated by the family, or in feudal times by political and religious institutions.
Structuralism: ‘Standard American Sociology’ Supplemented By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the conceptualizations used in SAS had not only begun to wane in popularity, but they were also directly attacked. Microsociologists were concerned that SAS required too formal and reified a view of people’s relationship to the social structure: an ‘oversocialized’ conception of mankind. On the other hand, the Standard American social structural analysts were criticized for dealing with trivia, for ignoring major societal level phenomena outside the framework they were working within, for lack of any historical or comparative perspective, and for an implicit conservative support of the status quo. To overcome these limitations, the next period of development tended to emphasize structural approaches.
Conflict Theory The critique of SAS as being overly concerned with ‘consensus’ was consolidated for a decade or so through the development of a supposedly polar opposite ‘conflict’ view: a ‘soft-core’ Marxism, or rather a ‘left-Weberianism’ whose proponents include Simmel as a fore-runner, Lewis Coser, Ralph Dahrendorf, and John Rex (e.g., Dahrendorf, 1968). This conflict, in contrast to the previously predominant emphasis on consensus, was useful for mobilizing alternative biases, but the distinction proved difficult to sustain over the longer term as it became realized that the two approaches could be seen as essentially complementary, sharing an underlying view of social structure.
The Social Construction of Reality Berger and Luckmann (1967) developed in the late 1960s a sophisticated account of the ‘social construction of reality’ which outflanked and advanced the treatments then available. They emphasized the fragility of social reality and the involvement of people in constructing those very social structures, they then came to experience as solid and real, with mechanisms to cover-over any broaches in their facticity, including the sharing of experiential commonalities, the deployment of aphorisms and sayings, and then relating any remaining difficulties people had in fitting into their constructed reality, to broader underlying conceptualizations shared in that culture. This approach points to the major role of legitimating cultural structures, such as religion, which serve to secure the social structure. Symbolic interactionists and kindred microsociologists tended to remain restricted to situational rather than structural
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analyses, but some attempts were made to explore compatible links with more macrosociological topics purveying the general idea that larger social structures involve an often-fragile ‘negotiated order,’ in which the various groupings involved participate on an ongoing basis (e.g., see Maines, 1991).
Formal Sociology: Blau’s Attempted Synopsis and Program In 1975, Peter Blau organized a group of eminent social theorists to directly confront the concept of ‘social structure,’ including several involved in historically orientated or comparative studies, as well as those more inclined to survey and other quantitative work. Blau’s definition is that “Social structure refers to the patterns discernible in social life, the regularities observed, the configurations detected.” Blau’s own program of structural analysis is termed a ‘primitive theory of social structure’ which pursues a program of ‘radical structuralism’ which sticks to sheer objective structural features while culture is seen as irrelevant. (See also the extreme views of Mayhew (1980/81) concerning structure.) Porpora (e.g., 1987) attacks this position by denigrating the deductivist philosophy of science at the heart of structuralist sociology. Rather, an alternative Marxian view of social structure is advanced which explores the relations between a realist and a social constructionist view.
Theoretical Reflections In addition to these various alternative models of social structure, more specific conceptions were also explored. l
Network theory. Organizational Sociology. l Social Movement theory. l
The SAS approach has continued (and has continued to develop) within Sociology (especially in North American sociology), and many social science journals remain filled with studies carried out within its broad paradigm. A common rhetoric shared by many of these more sophisticated versions of SAS cleaves to the formalization, mathematical, and statistical aspects of social structure. For example, White (2008) develops an abstract and difficult conceptualization of social structure, which complements the treatment of network linkages with an extension into the cultural aspects which also shape them. Kontopoulos (1993) developed a whole series of models of social structure in which their central logic is laid out cleanly to be inspected, leading to the argument that the model of ‘heterarchy’ is most appropriate for capturing the complexities of hierarchy and feedback so rife in social life. Under the leadership of Alexander (and in the writing of several important Continental social theorists, including Habermas and Luhmann), a ‘neofunctionalist’ revival attempted to reclaim much of the theoretical territory earlier dominated by Parsons through the addition of a theory of group formation and conflict (Alexander, 1985, 1987). David Lockwood (1992) also revisited Parsons’s earlier work on the differences between integration at the systems level and integration at the social level. He carefully reviews the relevance of Marxian and Durkheimian theories, each with their dominant and supplementary contributions in providing
explanations at both these levels, and indicates how they might be combined.
‘Process’ Reconceptualizations of Social Structure By the late 1970s, the critique of ideas about social structure had turned in a much more strictly theoretical direction, although this assisted in the demise of interest in ‘social structure’ because it became detached from concern with social issues. One line of theoretical debate focuses on the relationship between the macro- and microlevels, while another angle on it concerns the relationship between agency and structure. The ‘figuration’ word picture provided by Norbert Elias pointed to “The network of interdependencies among human beings is what binds them together.” But two major theorists have brought out in-depth discussions of social structure: Bourdieu’s ‘social constructivism’ and Giddens’s ‘structuration theory.’ Bourdieu has developed a sophisticated and appealing imagery of social structure and has connected this up with a wide range of empirical studies of particular social structures. His analysis works between the collective and individually based concepts, and between the subjective and the objective and in a correspondingly mediating position in terms of the other antinomies. Key concepts include ‘habitus’ (the mental schemas that people employ to order their world and which shapes their actions), ‘capital,’ and ‘field’: although these key terms are supplemented by many others. In a series of theoretical works stretching from the mid1970s, Anthony Giddens (e.g., 1984) has developed the most sophisticated generally available theory of social structure, usually advanced under the banner of the theory of ‘structuration’. Giddens is less concerned with developing a conceptual framework, which would then allow the derivation of more specific theories, than with endeavoring to recover from the available stock of social theories, a vision of social structure which can be philosophically sustained. In reaction to Giddens’s somewhat mystical rendering of the linkage between agency and structure, Margaret Archer (e.g., 2003) has championed a ‘morphogenetic’ approach, drawn in part from earlier theorists and general systems theory, in which the various levels and phases and types of consequence are explicitly spelled out. In this approach, structure and action operate over different time periods, with structure leading to action which may have the consequence of structural elaboration. More recently, this approach has been developed by a book on the relations between culture and social structure, and another on social structure. Sewell (2005) recognizes the untrammeled cognitive power of the concept of social structure, and sees it as afflicted by the three problems of appearing too hard, too impervious to change, and too open to a variety of meanings (in particular, the difference between the ‘social structure’ and ‘cultural structure’). He seeks to clean up the concept from these three contaminants. He uses the work of Giddens and Bourdieu to endeavor to provide a sense of agency and thus overcome the too rigid immutability of social structure; explores the potential for providing an account of social change; and stresses the
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involvement and interpenetration of both culture and resources within his concept of social structure. Mouzelis (e.g., 1995) has been involved in a program of theoretical work to reclaim the centrality of sociological theory from the clutches of philosophy, doctrinaire Marxism, or culturalist idealism into which it too easily has recently fallen. Central is the hierarchy of social levels, and their myriad connectiveness. Giddens’s concept of ‘dualisms’ is opened up when he points out that people vary in their relationship to the social structures they are in: sometimes being involved with merely reproducing the social structure while at other times standing off from it. He attempts to breakthrough the usual demarcation drawn between the micro- and the macrolevel by suggesting that some apparently microsituations have important macroconsequences. Analysis, he argues, should also concentrate as much on social integration as systems integration. On the whole, Bourdieu’s schema seems rather more satisfactory sociologically, than that of Giddens. Whereas Giddens’s ‘memory traces’ seem quite psychological, Bourdieu’s ‘habitus’ is clearly not only shared across each of the different groupings (e.g., classes), but further is an instrument of social differentiation in that different social groupings have different habituses: they are often complementary to each other within a wider system. Bourdieu’s main drawback is that his analysis exudes a mysticism, which is not carefully exercised from his conceptual thinking. Other commentaries abound, but alternative theoretical programs developing these ‘process reconceptualizations of social structure’ have yet to gain any momentum (Elder-Vass, 2012; López, 2003; Parker, 2000). More recently, some postmodernist writings (e.g., Baudrilliard, 1983) have challenged structural analysis as an explanatory approach, essentially by declaring that the subjectmatter it is concerned with has evaporated under a deluge of simulacra and electronically borne imageries. The stronger version of postmodernist arguments can be that people’s choices are so socially unconstrained that they are located merely in a ‘statistical mass’ (or even ‘random mass’) devoid of social control (although, an alternative argument is that the extent of cultural control through media and cultural images is overwhelming). The weaker version of this argument posits that the hold of modern social structures has loosened, and that the opportunity space of people’s choices has so widened that the standard verities of sociology have lost their explanatory purchase. No clear empirical support for this viewpoint is adduced, and it is arguable whether this critique is able to be arbitrated by empirical research. In the absence of clearer empirical support, it seems reasonable to suggest that the ‘end of the social’ argument tends to have been painted in too brilliant hues. Indeed, the death of the social has been much exaggerated. The most recent approach to analysis of social structure is that of ‘analytical sociology’ (e.g., Hedström and Bearman, 2009) which sees social structures as emerging from particularly social mechanisms that operate at an individual level, although buffeted by the social interaction contexts of the people involved. A discrete – but considerable – array of such mechanisms have been identified, although it remains unclear the extent to which this approach allows adequate analyses of social structures at the more aggregate or collective levels.
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Conclusions Conceptual debate concerning social structure has most importantly developed in sociology, together with attendant social philosophy but an interest in, and use of, the concept is spread across the other social sciences, but without raising further issues. Anthropology has a lively discourse, especially about the relationship between culture and social structure and Geography and Political science (but also economics and social psychology) all actively deploy the concept in many empirical analyses. The task of pinning down the best way to conceptualize social structures continues to slowly advance. If the way ahead is not clear, certainly lessons can be derived from reflecting on the history of social structural analysis noting several common difficulties that any schema needs to be concerned with: l
It seems useful to quite clearly separate social structure both from its (external) causes and its effects. l As well as seeking understanding of how a social structure operates, it is important to ground this understanding in the ongoing everyday life of members, and also to contextualize the social structure in terms of its long-term tendencies, and its relations with other social structures. l Particular care is needed to link micro (e.g., the interactional order) and macro aspects of social structures, and it is particularly important to capture both the determined (structure) and the voluntaristic (agency) aspects of social life. l Another distinction which may be helpful is that between culture and social structure, which certainly must always be addressed.
See also: AGIL, History of; Bourdieu, Pierre (1930–2002); Bureaucracy, Sociology of; Cooperation and Competition; Determinism: Social and Economic; Durkheim, Emile (1858–1917); Giddens, Anthony (1938–); Groups, Sociology of; Individualism versus Collectivism: Philosophical Aspects; Individuals in Society: History of the Concept; Integration, Social; Labor, Division of; Macrosociology-Microsociology; Merton, Robert K (1910–2003); Organizations, Sociology of; Parsons, Talcott (1902–79); Reference Group, History of; Sample Surveys: Cognitive Aspects of Survey Design; Simmel, Georg (1858–1918); Social Constructionism; Social Constructivism; Social Networks; Social Ontology; Social Properties (Facts and Entities): Philosophical Aspects; Social Structure; Social, The: History of the Concept; Society and People: History of the Concept; Solidarity, Sociology of; Status and Role: Structural Aspects; Weberian Social Thought, History of.
Bibliography Alexander, Jeffrey (Ed.), 1985. Neo-functionalism. Sage, Beverley Hills. Alexander, Jeffrey (Ed.), 1987. The Micro–Macro Link. University of California Press, Berkeley. Archer, Margaret, 2003. Structure, Agency, and the Internal Conversation. Cambridge University Press, New York.
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Baudrilliard, Jean, 1983. In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities or the End of the Social. Semiotext, New York. Berger, Peter, Luckmann, Thomas, 1967. The Social Construction of Social Reality. Penguin, Harmondsworth. Blau, Peter (Ed.), 1975. Approaches to the Study of Social Structure. Free Press, New York. Callinicos, Alex, 2007. Social Theory: A Historical Introduction, second ed. Polity Press, Cambridge. Chew, Sing, Knottnerus, J. David, 2002. Structure, Culture, and History: Recent Issues in Social Theory. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, MD. Crothers, Charles, 1996. Social Structure. Routledge, London. Dahrendorf, Ralph, 1968. Essays in the Theory of Society. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. Elder-Vass, Dave, 2012. The Reality of Social Construction. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, New York. Giddens, Anthony, 1984. The Constitution of Society. Polity Press, Oxford. Hawley, Amos, 1986. Human Ecology: A Theoretical Essay. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Hedström, Peter, Bearman, Peter (Eds.), 2009. The Oxford Handbook of Analytical Sociology. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Kontopoulos, Kyriakos, 1993. The Logics of Social Structure. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Levi-Strauss, Claude, 1963. Structural Anthropology. Basic Books, New York. Levine, Donald, 1995. Visions of the Sociological Tradition. University of Chicago Press. Lockwood, David, 1992. Solidarity and Schism: ‘The Problem of Disorder’ in Durkheimian and Marxist Sociology. Clarendon Press, Oxford. López, José, 2003. Society and Its Metaphors: Language, Social Theory and Social Structure. Continuum, New York; London. López, José, Scott, J., 2000. Social Structure. Open University Press, Philadelphia, PA (Concepts in the social sciences).
Maines, David (Ed.), 1991. Social Organization and Social Process: Essays in Honor of Anselm Strauss. Aldine de Gruyter, New York. Marx, Karl, 1981/1882. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Penguin, London. Mayhew, Bruce, 1980/1981. Structuralism v individualism. Social Forces 59, 335–375, 627–648. Merton, Robert K., 1949/1968. Social Theory and Social Structure. Free Press, Glencoe, IL. Mills, C. Wright (Ed.), 1960. Images of Man: The Classical Tradition in Sociological Thinking. Braziller, New York. Mouzelis, Nicos, 1995. Sociological Theory: What Went Wrong? Routledge, London. Mullins, Nicholas, 1973. Theories and Theory-Groups in Contemporary American Sociology. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York. Nadel, S.F., 1957. The Theory of Social Structure. Melbourne University Press, Melbourne. Parker, John, 2000. Structuration. Open University, Phildelphia, PA. Parsons, Talcott, 1973. Culture and social structure revisited. In: Schneider, L., Bonjean, C. (Eds.), The Idea of Culture in the Social Sciences. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Porpora, Douglas, 1987. The Concept of Social Structure. Greenwood Press, Westport, CT. Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred R., 1957. A Natural Science of Society. Free Press, Glencoe, IL. Sewell, William, 2005. Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Weber, Max, 1947. The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. Free Press, Glencoe, IL. White, Harrison, 2008. Identity and Control: How Social Formations Emerge, second ed. Princeton University Press, Princeton. Williams, Raymond, 1983. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Abstract Although the palpably powerful nature of social structures and their effects seems obvious, it has taken social scientists – and particularly sociologists – a long time to develop adequate conceptions that both are philosophically defensible and also lead to empirical research. During the ‘golden age’ (in the late nineteenth century and for much of the twentieth century) of social structural analysis, rather underdeveloped ideas of social structure were, nonetheless, pressed into highly effective service in analyzing actual structures and this continues. Alongside these actual analyses, more sophisticated understandings have evolved although this area of study is still not adequately consolidated.
Introduction: Basics Social structure is a concept and term used to capture the collective properties exhibited by social entities and to identify the characteristics of and specify the relationships among their component elements. It is widely considered to be one of the most important concepts/terms in the social sciences and a particularly central concept/term in sociology and important in other social sciences. However, writing on social structure has been scattered, piecemeal, and not particularly cumulative. Strangely, social theorists have been reticent in making their analyses of social structure more explicit (Callinicos, 2007; Crothers, 1996; López and Scott, 2000; Chew and Knottnerus, 2002). There are at least four primordial images of social structure, which have to be somewhat separately attended to, although for adequate understanding each must be evoked: Social Organization: Social structure is the concrete relations among concrete individuals and concrete groups, e.g., Networks. Social Background Characteristics: Social structure is the relations among people sharing the same social background characteristics, or differing in terms of social background characteristics. Institutional Structures: Social structure is the relations among people, categories, etc. laid down by ongoing organizations and cultural forms. Underlying (Deep) Social Structures: Social structures exist (somewhat irrespective of the actions of those ‘carrying’ them) at deeper (and more abstract) levels. With all these, they both constrain the possibilities for social activity and provide a structured range of opportunities.
originated . in seventeenth and eighteenth century botany, from which they spread to other natural and social sciences.” However, Raymond Williams, in his Keywords (1983), provides a rather more lengthy account of the linguistic history. The earliest usages of ‘structure’ in the fifteenth century referred to the process of building. By the seventeenth century, it referred to both the whole product and the manner of construction – the meaning emphasized the inner structure: the arrangements among constituent parts. The term was used about the anatomy, as a contrast to the functioning (or performance), of a body part. In the 1870s, usages contrasted internal arrangements and (surface) decoration. In the twentieth century in linguistics, and then other social sciences, structure signaled an analytical or formal study rather than a comparative/historical or process approach (which had been more appropriate for the study of more familiar European social structures). There are similar complexities in the meanings of related terms such as form and system. He also notes that “much structuralist analysis is formalist in the sense of separating form and content and giving form priority” (Williams, 1983: p. 306). There is also a somewhat separate history of the concept of ‘the social’ which is seen to have arisen as a distinctive order or domain of social reality through various eighteenth century discourses, which theorized and reflected on this order. ‘The social’ outflanked the more usual social categories up to that time: e.g., the polity, stratificational orders, etc. Its death is seen as arising as it is replaced by a virtual reality comprising signs and symbols seemingly detached from material reality. Social structure can be conceptualized as particularly embedded within this domain. Phases in Development of the Concept: Each of the successive ‘cohorts’ of social structural models is schematically outlined in Table 1.
The ‘Language’ of Social and Structure The Prehistory of Concepts of Social Structure According to the Oxford English Dictionary, Alex de Tocqueville was the first to use the term ‘social structure,’ followed by Herbert Spencer in 1872 and then references in the 1940s (Meyer Fortes), and 1960s (Claude Levi-Strauss). Perhaps it is a quite definitive indicator that the term really did not begin to be widespreadly deployed until well into the nineteenth century. William Sewell Jr. (2005) cites Michel Foucault to suggest that ‘structure’ is a general metaphor and that “such usages
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There clearly is a ‘prehistory’ of concepts of social structure. Several writers have drawn attention to the collectivist aspects of social theory in Greek, Roman, Arab, Medieval, and Renaissance thought. After these periods of social thought, a strong individualism was built into the models of the classical political economists (such as the Scottish school) which clearly limited their interest in social structure. However, over the
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Table 1
Phases in social structural thinking
Approach
Time-period
‘Prehistory’ Founding fathers British structural–functional anthropology American structural–functional sociology Inter-regnum Structuralism ‘Process’ reconceptualizations Poststructuralism/post-post-structuralism
Pre-1890 1890–1920 1920–50 1950–65 1965–75 1975–85 1985–95 1995–present
several centuries of the ‘Enlightenment Project,’ qualified holistic viewpoints of the social also evolved. Nevertheless, one of the major lessons in the history of social thought is that the extraction of conceptions, both which are social (i.e., not essentially political, or even economic) and which also involve analytical, scientific treatment of the collective properties of social entities, are hard won. Moreover, progress at developing working theoretical models of social structure was slow, in some considerable part because of the lack of development of institutionalized traditions of social theoretical work. In Donald Levine’s (1995) treatment of the Hellenic tradition in sociology, he analyses the approach used by Aristotle to study how the good life might be achieved. Although its moral purpose was paramount, nevertheless Aristotle’s was a grounded inquiry. It involved examining the natures of these entities and the reasons why they arose. Aristotle identified the three forms of association: l
households (in which people join together for the sakes of reproduction and of self-preservation); l villages; and l city-states (to allow expression of discourse about bad and good, and as the culmination of the social life of its components) especially as represented by their constitutions. Aristotle then analyzed variation among political communities in terms of their internal relationships between governing and subject strata. “The constitutive elements of associational domains are their role sets and the resources available to them (e.g., husband–wife, parent–child, master–slave, master–inanimate possession relationships in the household, and ruler–ruled relationships in the political community). Responsibilities for each role–position are specified, together with the type of socialization he deemed necessary to cultivate the best qualities required in the carrying out of those responsibilities” (Levine, 1995: p. 118). Aristotle utilized his dataset of the constitutions of more than 150 communities to examine the best sources for regime stability, especially as appropriate to communities of different sizes and socioeconomic compositions. Various scattered attempts at social structural analysis occurred thereafter. One of the more notable was that of the medieval Muslim philosopher Ibn Khaldun, who produced an interesting sociology of the cyclical variation of social forms in the Arab world. Charles-Louis Montesquieu in the mideighteenth century and then Jean-Jacques Rousseau continued
the focus on political forms but began to show how these are embedded within broader societal, and particularly geographical, features. French social thinkers saw social structures as things, shaped by laws, arranged into hierarchies, which had development trajectories and were composed of interdependent cultural and social structures. An historical sociology of the evolutionary development of societies was most developed by the eighteenth century Scottish philosophers in their ‘Four Stages Theory’ of progression of types of society – hunting, pasturage, agriculture, and commerce. This broad framework was extended and deepened by other writers. Spencer provided the culmination of this framework in his work, based on considerable secondary analysis, the internal processes within societies, and their stages of evolution. Spencer visualized each stage as being denoted by (1) a given degree of differentiation between regulatory, operative, and distributive processes and (2) a level of differentiation within each process. He saw five basic stages in terms of their complexity: (1) simple without head (leadership), (2) simple with head (leadership), (3) compound, (4) double compound, and (5) treble compound.
Classical Social Structural Analysis Some general notions about social structure – which C.W. Mills (1960) later termed the ‘Classical Tradition’ of sociology – gradually developed during the course of the nineteenth century as a by-product of historical studies, although it was also used in political analysis and social commentary, albeit not much connected up with social research in the narrower sense. This model included “. basic conceptions or theories of such matters as social stratification and political authority, of the nature of bureaucracy and of capitalism, of the scale and drift of modern life, of the ambiguity of rationality, of the malaise individual men so often feel” (1960: p. 5). Such classical sociological analyses focus on at least one social grouping set within a wider social formation. These social groupings often have a particular economic role, hold power, or are centrally involved with cultural development or cultural maintenance, such as social classes, estates, broad political movements, or the ‘intelligentsia.’ The historical trajectory of the grouping: its rise, continuance, and fall are examined together with the grouping’s terminology (especially its own names for itself), internal positions, and external boundary maintenance; its economic base, political power, and cultural legitimacy; its demography; its social and ritual life; its relations to other social groupings, and the leadership, organizations, and networks through which it is organized and can mobilize to achieve any common goals. Tocqueville is an early structural analyst who suggested that through their voluntary associating, for joint interests, both publicly and privately, Americans are able to overcome selfish individualism and to create both an active political society and an active civil society independent from the state. However, such structural analyses were not underpinned by a formal theory. None of the now-recognized Founding Fathers of Sociology had a well-developed and explicit model of social structure, but a semi-implicit model of social structure was
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central within the work of each. For Marx and Weber in particular, this particularly focused on class structure.
Marx The main thrust of Marx’s later work lay in understanding the economic machinery of capitalism. His ‘sociology’ is both embedded within or envelops his ‘political economy’: Marx saw social life being lived within ‘social formations,’ composed of various economic, social, and political groupings: especially social classes which shaped the individuals involved with them. At the center of each social formation is,
The specific economic form, in which unpaid surplus-labor is pumped out of direct producers, determines the relationship of rulers and ruled, as it grows directly out of production itself and in turn reacts upon it as a determining element. Upon this, however, is founded the formation of the economic community which grows out of the production relations themselves, thereby determining simultaneously its specific political form. It is always the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers–a relationship always naturally corresponding with a definite stage in the development of the methods of labor and thereby its social productivity–which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden base of the entire social structure, and with it the political form of the relationship of sovereignty and dependence, in short, the corresponding specific form of the state. (Marx, 1981: 791)
The State (as the executive committee of the ruling or dominant class) ensured social cohesion and cloaked capitalist society in a blanket of false consciousness, which hid the way in which society was organized in the ruling classes’ interests. In addition, Marx depicted the dynamics of the whole formation which centered on the extent to which such social groupings and particularly social classes might cohere sufficiently to exert a social force in their own right. An important difference is that between a class-in-itself (not aware of the shared nature of its material interests) and a class-for-itself (which is aware of its shared interests and has some organizational capacity for realizing these). A critical element in building the conflict necessary for an eventual revolution is the dissipation of the cloying false consciousness, and its replacement with a revolutionary consciousness. In turn, the dynamics of structural change are placed within a much wider historical framework, in which the successive developments of different modes of production are placed within a sequence. In a general way, ancient (slave), medieval (feudal), and modern (capitalist) modes are seen as part of an evolutionary sequence, with the capitalist mode (and perhaps deformed feudal peasant modes) leading on to the subsequent stage of a socialist mode of production. Societal change is seen as driven by the interaction between organizational arrangements in the economy (relations of production) and technology (productive forces).
Weber Weber’s views (see especially 1947) on social structure are more developed than those of Marx, and his theoretical reflections directly pertain to social structure. Nevertheless,
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Weber does not attempt to develop a full understanding of social structures. Rather, his tools of structural analysis are designed to assist in the analysis of those portions of historical experience, in which he had a particular interest. On the other hand, his work is cast within a very broad comparative and historical range: encompassing study of Western, Chinese, Indian, and Ancient civilizations. A central point is ‘methodological individualism’ requiring explanations in terms of the involvement of individuals and also need to meet the criteria of providing objective as well as meaningful explanation. Weber’s approach to social structure, including social classes, is much more flexible than Marx’s. A class is seen as any social grouping which shares a similar position within a market (e.g., the labor market), with ‘similar position’ meaning that its members share similar life-chances. Rather than emphasizing only the economic/material sphere, Weber sees several dimensions around which social strata might form: class (concerned with economic matters), party (concerned with power), and status group (concerned with social prestige or honor). Finally, Weber provided a particularly potent model of organizational analysis (and social structural analysis more generally) with his theoretical model of a bureaucracy. He depicted this as a ‘machine’ of hierarchically organized ‘offices’ filled by meritocratically appointed, salaried, careerist ‘officials’ who are constrained to efficiently tackle their collective tasks within a systematic framework of rules, records, and reporting.
Durkheim Of the three (major) founding fathers of sociology, Durkheim was the one most seriously concerned with social structure. However, even for Durkheim, the precise term is used only in passing, and references are made more generally to society, and to the social bonds constituting society. Durkheim was aggressively antireductionist and collectivist in approach. The concept of a ‘social fact’ was central, and social facts were seen as separate from, and overwhelming the individual. Social facts are a framework of collectively shared obligations on the individual, involving either ‘crystallized’ (e.g., expressed in adages or writing) or more diffuse ‘social currents.’ Usually the collective shaping of a person is internalized and constant pressure is not needed. Such social pressure is felt most when a person resists obligations. This results in conformity to them because social groups or the State upholds them. At a more descriptive level, Durkheim developed a conception of social morphology involving accounts of the nature (e.g., size, functions), number, arrangement (e.g., spatial distribution), and interrelations (e.g., modes of communication, movement, and mutual obligation) among the social parts (individual or collective) of a society. Durkheim clearly postulated that the central conceptual problem on analyzing social structures was its ‘division of labor,’ and the consequence for the structure’s type and level of social integration. Whereas primitive social structures were seen as organized around similarity in their task structures, which was complemented by a tight ‘repressive’ social control, more complex societies had a division of labor characterized by complementary specialization, and this was then matched by a system of social control which emphasized ‘restitution.’
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Simmel Of other sociologists in the ‘founding’ generation, the work of Simmel has proved to be of lasting significance. Simmel developed a ‘formal’ sociology (as opposed to sociological treatment of ‘content’), in which properties of small groups and social situations were seen to affect the behavior. His approach could allow the compilation of systematic propositions about the operation of social structures. For example, Simmel wrote about the effects of differences in sizes of groups for interaction among their members. The conception of abstracting social content in order to reveal structural similarities across diverse situations also proved to be helpful to later analysts. Diverse social groups may nevertheless show identical forms of behavior toward one another on the part of individual members – relationships such as superiority and subordination, competition, division of labor, formation of parties, representation, and inner solidarity coupled with exclusiveness toward the outside can be found in the state, in a religious community, in a band of conspirators, kin, in an economic association, in an art school, and in the family. Simmel’s imagery of the way in which people in modern societies are complexly related was through cross-cutting social circles, as opposed to the concentric circles of more primordial situations.
Structuralist Approaches British Structural–Functional Anthropology Beginning in the 1910s, and maturing in the immediate postWorld War I period, a self-conscious analytical approach to social structural analysis was developed by the British school of structural–functional anthropologists. This was begun by Malinowski, but predominantly shaped by Radcliffe-Brown (1957), and later summarized in a wider range of texts (e.g., Nadel’s theoretical treatise: 1957). Earlier approaches in which emphasis was placed on the evolution and diffusion of cultural traits were rejected in favor of understanding the current operation of small-scale societies (and later, rather larger African ones). Any social practice was seen in terms of its ‘role’ within its societal context, which enabled ‘Strange’ tribal practices to be ‘mapped onto’ more commonly understood Western concepts. This approach was considerably inspired by Durkheim’s views on social collectivities. There were at least two main strands, with Malinowski endeavoring to reach down to the ways in which societies met the sociobiological needs of their members, while RadcliffeBrown emphasized a more strictly social structural level of analysis. The latter approach came to dominate in structural analyses but the theme of how individuals relate to social structures reoccurs in later views and debates.
American Structural–Functional Sociology During the 1950s and 1960s, American sociology was dominated by an approach generally labeled as ‘structuralfunctionalist,’ or (retrospectively) to use Mullins’s (1973) term as ‘Standard American Sociology’ (SAS). To a considerable extent, this involved a translation of British structural–functional anthropology into the then-contemporary and larger scale American context. Although the functional mode of
explanation (in terms of consequences, especially for environing social systems) continued, as with its anthropological predecessor, the inherent teleology has been later resisted, although functional analyses can still be seen as a useful heuristic approach for generating hypotheses. There was a strong and consistent attention to the analysis of social structure through concepts such as ‘role theory’ and ‘social system’ and others. Another path lays in the development of research tools more appropriate to the investigation of the structures of large-scale societies, especially large-scale surveys. Theoretical and methodological advances often benefited each other. A range of standard social background variables was deployed in surveys, which were useful in predicting patterns of behaviors or attitudes. As Merton (1949) pointed out, these social background variables reflected the main social statuses which people might occupy. While much of this sociology retained a strong interest in characteristics of individuals (or patterns among various of the properties of individuals) which the survey research methodology made possible, surveys were also employed to study the ‘emergent’ or ‘structural’ characteristics of various types of social unit such as groups, households/families, organizations, suburbs, regions, and nations. As well, considerable theoretical and methodological knowledge accumulated about how relations between individuals and various types of social entities might best be studied and explained. A useful example is the Lazarsfeld typology of the different types of individual and collective properties, in which individuals can influence other individuals or collectivities and in turn collectivities can shape individuals or other collectivities. At a more macrosociological level, analyses of which social dimensions (social cleavages) were more salient in describing patterns of societal development and operation. For example, societies with cross-cutting cleavages were more likely not to be crippled by major conflicts since the widespread sharing of interests held in common by ‘parties,’ which stood in different positions in relation to a dispute, is likely to dampen its socially destructive effect. Comparative historical sociologists studied questions such as the degree of support for left-wing political movements, finding their explanations in terms of other features of the social structure: for example, lack of socialist development in USA was seen as flowing from the (supposedly) quite open-ended texture of the American social structure, and especially the possibility that upward mobility might be achieved by all. The ‘human ecology’ aspects of the 1920s Chicago school of sociology were formalized by Duncan and Schnore into a ‘POET’ framework, which analyzed the interrelations among Population, Organization, Environment, and Technology (see also Hawley, 1986). This schema usefully pointed to the natural environment context of social structures and some of the key elements which shaped their long-term operations. Role theory was an important conceptual foundation stone. Often the concept was used generally and descriptively to indicate that social life was socially patterned. In some theoretical approaches, emphasis was laid on the way roles and their occupants were shaped by social learning and monitoring by role-others, rather than as in the ‘symbolic interactionist’ formulation in which role-occupant’s orientation to their role was stressed. Panoply of role-related concepts piled up
Social Structure: History of the Concept (e.g., Merton’s status-and-role theory which allowed finer conceptual discriminations).
Parsons The ‘grand theoretical’ work of Parsons endeavored to lay down a solid conceptual foundation and standard vocabulary for the social sciences, in particular, anthropology, sociology, and social psychology (e.g., 1973). The three interlinked master concepts – culture, social systems, and personality – are held to be separate, autonomous, and yet interpenetrating analytical systems. A social system is seen as the interaction of the plurality of persons and their relationships, with its central building block being that of the role. Roles are a sliver of someone’s personality, but are more than this in that they also stand outside the personality. Roles constitute and govern the interaction between people – each in their respective roles – through providing complementary and mutually adjusting sets of expectations. Many roles are ‘institutionalized’ by being built into wider cultural patterns and controlled by social sanctions. However, the social system seems to be a residual concept and the cultural determinism is so overwhelming that there is little room left for autonomous social activity.
French Structuralism During the late 1960s, two forms of structural analysis – both drawing inspiration from Marxism, and both emanating from Paris – captured much attention. Despite their relatively brief span of popularity, both marked out the extremes of a ‘structural determinist’ approach. For French anthropological theorist Claude Levi-Strauss, “The term ‘social structure’ has nothing to do with empirical reality but with models built up after it” (1963). Indeed, the drive of his analysis is to show how styles of ‘native’ thinking (in whichever culture is being studied) across all areas of cultural and social life are all embedded within deep semilinguistic patterns of thinking (possibly even mentalistic, being hard-wired into the digital structure of the brain). Thus, ‘native’ concepts of kinship patterns, religious ideology, and all else is subsumed under broad models of thinking that eventually reduce down, via transformation rules, into dualities dwelling in the mind. Levi-Straus’s approach showed mind-stretching linkages, such as postulated themes running through the entire range of North American tribal cultures, but it seemed to falter in the hands of others. The other structuralist development, which peaked at much the same time, was centered on the work of social philosopher Louis Althusser. In this approach of ‘structural Marxism,’ Marx was (re)interpreted to fit a highly determinist and scientific understanding of social development. Marx’s model of the working of the capitalist economy was accepted as adequate and instead, attention focused on two consequent issues: l
How Marxism might be construed to offer satisfactory explanations of societies other than capitalist ones (and indeed to provide a theorized sequence of types of society)? l How the whole of a society was to be seen as operating? A threefold distinction is assembled: society is seen as comprising the economy, the polity, and the ideological state apparatus. The functional role of the latter two sectors
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is to repress the population, by force and by imposing ideological consensus, into supporting the status quo set by the current mode of economic organization. A society can be described by which of the three structures is dominant; but no matter which is the dominant structure, it is always the economic structure that determines which is dominant: the economy is the determinant ‘in the last instance.’ In capitalism, the economy is the main institution, whereas earlier societies had been dominated by the family, or in feudal times by political and religious institutions.
Structuralism: ‘Standard American Sociology’ Supplemented By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the conceptualizations used in SAS had not only begun to wane in popularity, but they were also directly attacked. Microsociologists were concerned that SAS required too formal and reified a view of people’s relationship to the social structure: an ‘oversocialized’ conception of mankind. On the other hand, the Standard American social structural analysts were criticized for dealing with trivia, for ignoring major societal level phenomena outside the framework they were working within, for lack of any historical or comparative perspective, and for an implicit conservative support of the status quo. To overcome these limitations, the next period of development tended to emphasize structural approaches.
Conflict Theory The critique of SAS as being overly concerned with ‘consensus’ was consolidated for a decade or so through the development of a supposedly polar opposite ‘conflict’ view: a ‘soft-core’ Marxism, or rather a ‘left-Weberianism’ whose proponents include Simmel as a fore-runner, Lewis Coser, Ralph Dahrendorf, and John Rex (e.g., Dahrendorf, 1968). This conflict, in contrast to the previously predominant emphasis on consensus, was useful for mobilizing alternative biases, but the distinction proved difficult to sustain over the longer term as it became realized that the two approaches could be seen as essentially complementary, sharing an underlying view of social structure.
The Social Construction of Reality Berger and Luckmann (1967) developed in the late 1960s a sophisticated account of the ‘social construction of reality’ which outflanked and advanced the treatments then available. They emphasized the fragility of social reality and the involvement of people in constructing those very social structures, they then came to experience as solid and real, with mechanisms to cover-over any broaches in their facticity, including the sharing of experiential commonalities, the deployment of aphorisms and sayings, and then relating any remaining difficulties people had in fitting into their constructed reality, to broader underlying conceptualizations shared in that culture. This approach points to the major role of legitimating cultural structures, such as religion, which serve to secure the social structure. Symbolic interactionists and kindred microsociologists tended to remain restricted to situational rather than structural
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analyses, but some attempts were made to explore compatible links with more macrosociological topics purveying the general idea that larger social structures involve an often-fragile ‘negotiated order,’ in which the various groupings involved participate on an ongoing basis (e.g., see Maines, 1991).
Formal Sociology: Blau’s Attempted Synopsis and Program In 1975, Peter Blau organized a group of eminent social theorists to directly confront the concept of ‘social structure,’ including several involved in historically orientated or comparative studies, as well as those more inclined to survey and other quantitative work. Blau’s definition is that “Social structure refers to the patterns discernible in social life, the regularities observed, the configurations detected.” Blau’s own program of structural analysis is termed a ‘primitive theory of social structure’ which pursues a program of ‘radical structuralism’ which sticks to sheer objective structural features while culture is seen as irrelevant. (See also the extreme views of Mayhew (1980/81) concerning structure.) Porpora (e.g., 1987) attacks this position by denigrating the deductivist philosophy of science at the heart of structuralist sociology. Rather, an alternative Marxian view of social structure is advanced which explores the relations between a realist and a social constructionist view.
Theoretical Reflections In addition to these various alternative models of social structure, more specific conceptions were also explored. l
Network theory. Organizational Sociology. l Social Movement theory. l
The SAS approach has continued (and has continued to develop) within Sociology (especially in North American sociology), and many social science journals remain filled with studies carried out within its broad paradigm. A common rhetoric shared by many of these more sophisticated versions of SAS cleaves to the formalization, mathematical, and statistical aspects of social structure. For example, White (2008) develops an abstract and difficult conceptualization of social structure, which complements the treatment of network linkages with an extension into the cultural aspects which also shape them. Kontopoulos (1993) developed a whole series of models of social structure in which their central logic is laid out cleanly to be inspected, leading to the argument that the model of ‘heterarchy’ is most appropriate for capturing the complexities of hierarchy and feedback so rife in social life. Under the leadership of Alexander (and in the writing of several important Continental social theorists, including Habermas and Luhmann), a ‘neofunctionalist’ revival attempted to reclaim much of the theoretical territory earlier dominated by Parsons through the addition of a theory of group formation and conflict (Alexander, 1985, 1987). David Lockwood (1992) also revisited Parsons’s earlier work on the differences between integration at the systems level and integration at the social level. He carefully reviews the relevance of Marxian and Durkheimian theories, each with their dominant and supplementary contributions in providing
explanations at both these levels, and indicates how they might be combined.
‘Process’ Reconceptualizations of Social Structure By the late 1970s, the critique of ideas about social structure had turned in a much more strictly theoretical direction, although this assisted in the demise of interest in ‘social structure’ because it became detached from concern with social issues. One line of theoretical debate focuses on the relationship between the macro- and microlevels, while another angle on it concerns the relationship between agency and structure. The ‘figuration’ word picture provided by Norbert Elias pointed to “The network of interdependencies among human beings is what binds them together.” But two major theorists have brought out in-depth discussions of social structure: Bourdieu’s ‘social constructivism’ and Giddens’s ‘structuration theory.’ Bourdieu has developed a sophisticated and appealing imagery of social structure and has connected this up with a wide range of empirical studies of particular social structures. His analysis works between the collective and individually based concepts, and between the subjective and the objective and in a correspondingly mediating position in terms of the other antinomies. Key concepts include ‘habitus’ (the mental schemas that people employ to order their world and which shapes their actions), ‘capital,’ and ‘field’: although these key terms are supplemented by many others. In a series of theoretical works stretching from the mid1970s, Anthony Giddens (e.g., 1984) has developed the most sophisticated generally available theory of social structure, usually advanced under the banner of the theory of ‘structuration’. Giddens is less concerned with developing a conceptual framework, which would then allow the derivation of more specific theories, than with endeavoring to recover from the available stock of social theories, a vision of social structure which can be philosophically sustained. In reaction to Giddens’s somewhat mystical rendering of the linkage between agency and structure, Margaret Archer (e.g., 2003) has championed a ‘morphogenetic’ approach, drawn in part from earlier theorists and general systems theory, in which the various levels and phases and types of consequence are explicitly spelled out. In this approach, structure and action operate over different time periods, with structure leading to action which may have the consequence of structural elaboration. More recently, this approach has been developed by a book on the relations between culture and social structure, and another on social structure. Sewell (2005) recognizes the untrammeled cognitive power of the concept of social structure, and sees it as afflicted by the three problems of appearing too hard, too impervious to change, and too open to a variety of meanings (in particular, the difference between the ‘social structure’ and ‘cultural structure’). He seeks to clean up the concept from these three contaminants. He uses the work of Giddens and Bourdieu to endeavor to provide a sense of agency and thus overcome the too rigid immutability of social structure; explores the potential for providing an account of social change; and stresses the
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involvement and interpenetration of both culture and resources within his concept of social structure. Mouzelis (e.g., 1995) has been involved in a program of theoretical work to reclaim the centrality of sociological theory from the clutches of philosophy, doctrinaire Marxism, or culturalist idealism into which it too easily has recently fallen. Central is the hierarchy of social levels, and their myriad connectiveness. Giddens’s concept of ‘dualisms’ is opened up when he points out that people vary in their relationship to the social structures they are in: sometimes being involved with merely reproducing the social structure while at other times standing off from it. He attempts to breakthrough the usual demarcation drawn between the micro- and the macrolevel by suggesting that some apparently microsituations have important macroconsequences. Analysis, he argues, should also concentrate as much on social integration as systems integration. On the whole, Bourdieu’s schema seems rather more satisfactory sociologically, than that of Giddens. Whereas Giddens’s ‘memory traces’ seem quite psychological, Bourdieu’s ‘habitus’ is clearly not only shared across each of the different groupings (e.g., classes), but further is an instrument of social differentiation in that different social groupings have different habituses: they are often complementary to each other within a wider system. Bourdieu’s main drawback is that his analysis exudes a mysticism, which is not carefully exercised from his conceptual thinking. Other commentaries abound, but alternative theoretical programs developing these ‘process reconceptualizations of social structure’ have yet to gain any momentum (Elder-Vass, 2012; López, 2003; Parker, 2000). More recently, some postmodernist writings (e.g., Baudrilliard, 1983) have challenged structural analysis as an explanatory approach, essentially by declaring that the subjectmatter it is concerned with has evaporated under a deluge of simulacra and electronically borne imageries. The stronger version of postmodernist arguments can be that people’s choices are so socially unconstrained that they are located merely in a ‘statistical mass’ (or even ‘random mass’) devoid of social control (although, an alternative argument is that the extent of cultural control through media and cultural images is overwhelming). The weaker version of this argument posits that the hold of modern social structures has loosened, and that the opportunity space of people’s choices has so widened that the standard verities of sociology have lost their explanatory purchase. No clear empirical support for this viewpoint is adduced, and it is arguable whether this critique is able to be arbitrated by empirical research. In the absence of clearer empirical support, it seems reasonable to suggest that the ‘end of the social’ argument tends to have been painted in too brilliant hues. Indeed, the death of the social has been much exaggerated. The most recent approach to analysis of social structure is that of ‘analytical sociology’ (e.g., Hedström and Bearman, 2009) which sees social structures as emerging from particularly social mechanisms that operate at an individual level, although buffeted by the social interaction contexts of the people involved. A discrete – but considerable – array of such mechanisms have been identified, although it remains unclear the extent to which this approach allows adequate analyses of social structures at the more aggregate or collective levels.
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Conclusions Conceptual debate concerning social structure has most importantly developed in sociology, together with attendant social philosophy but an interest in, and use of, the concept is spread across the other social sciences, but without raising further issues. Anthropology has a lively discourse, especially about the relationship between culture and social structure and Geography and Political science (but also economics and social psychology) all actively deploy the concept in many empirical analyses. The task of pinning down the best way to conceptualize social structures continues to slowly advance. If the way ahead is not clear, certainly lessons can be derived from reflecting on the history of social structural analysis noting several common difficulties that any schema needs to be concerned with: l
It seems useful to quite clearly separate social structure both from its (external) causes and its effects. l As well as seeking understanding of how a social structure operates, it is important to ground this understanding in the ongoing everyday life of members, and also to contextualize the social structure in terms of its long-term tendencies, and its relations with other social structures. l Particular care is needed to link micro (e.g., the interactional order) and macro aspects of social structures, and it is particularly important to capture both the determined (structure) and the voluntaristic (agency) aspects of social life. l Another distinction which may be helpful is that between culture and social structure, which certainly must always be addressed.
See also: AGIL, History of; Bourdieu, Pierre (1930–2002); Bureaucracy, Sociology of; Cooperation and Competition; Determinism: Social and Economic; Durkheim, Emile (1858–1917); Giddens, Anthony (1938–); Groups, Sociology of; Individualism versus Collectivism: Philosophical Aspects; Individuals in Society: History of the Concept; Integration, Social; Labor, Division of; Macrosociology-Microsociology; Merton, Robert K (1910–2003); Organizations, Sociology of; Parsons, Talcott (1902–79); Reference Group, History of; Sample Surveys: Cognitive Aspects of Survey Design; Simmel, Georg (1858–1918); Social Constructionism; Social Constructivism; Social Networks; Social Ontology; Social Properties (Facts and Entities): Philosophical Aspects; Social Structure; Social, The: History of the Concept; Society and People: History of the Concept; Solidarity, Sociology of; Status and Role: Structural Aspects; Weberian Social Thought, History of.
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