Page 57 - Cultural Theory

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••• Chris Rojek •••

Notes

1 The Birmingham School advocated the ideal of the ‘organic intellectual’ as the ideal intel-
lectual labourer. The concept is borrowed from Antonio Gramsci. It refers to an intellectual
who acts as a switchboard between the cutting edge ideas in society and the people. The
organic intellectual is compared pointedly with the traditional intellectual. The latter is
regarded as divorced from society and culture by an over-academicized perspective. In con-
trast the organic intellectual operates as a switch-point between the cutting edge ideas in
society and the masses. The Birmingham view of intellectual labour is this deeply politicized.
Work which has no overt political commitment to advance working class interests, as is the
case with the labour of Simmel, is generally periphalized in the Birmingham approach.
2 Institutional sociology is concerned to delineate the key social institutions and identify their
functions. The approach is most fully developed in the structural–functionalist tradition
associated with Talcott Parsons and his followers. However, institutional sociology also fig-
ures in many radical approaches, notably Althusserianism, feminism and the Frankfurt
School. The concepts of ideology, the repressive state/ideological state apparatus, patriarchy,
the family and the culture industry, all have a negative connotation in these traditions. They
are associated with functioning to increase repression and subordination. Action sociology is
more concerned with the modes of interaction and their consequences. Weber’s sociology and
symbolic interactionism are examples of the action approach. Action sociology is janus faced.
In most versions, notably Weber, Goffman and Garfinkel, it is concerned with understanding
the hermeneutics and causality of social action. However, it can also address the question of
transforming action through instrumental conduct (Gramsci, Hall, Gilroy).
3 Hermeneutics is a theory of interpreting human action and its consequences. Gadamer’s
(1960) concept of the hermeneutic circle holds that we can only interpret and understand a con-
crete act with reference to the encompassing social cosmology that produced it. The task of the
intellectual labourer in the social sciences is to elucidate the parameters of the social cosmol-
ogy in which agents are situated in order to elicit a more reflexive world order. Verstehen is the
German word for understanding. The method of verstehen is particularly associated with the
sociology of Max Weber who held that the task of action sociology is to explore human actions
in terms of the subjective meaning of the act. Weber’s approach urges sociologists to identify
with the subjective meaning that social actors invest in behaviour.
4 A long debate exists in sociology on the question of whether sociological practice can aspire
to the state of value-freedom. This condition envisages a direct scientific relation between
interpretation and the elucidation of reality. It is vulnerable to attacks from cultural rela-
tivism which propose that all sociological activity is inevitably situated in a hermeneutic cir-
cle which structures agency and understanding. Weber recognized that sociology may fail to
achieve the condition of value freedom. However, he urged sociologists to seek to isolate
their values and articulate them. Through open, reflexive debate sociologists have the means
to mitigate the influence of values on research. Weber argued that in this way sociologists
can contribute to the building-up of scientific facts of society. However, they have no busi-
ness in seeking to settle the ultimate values in society since these are always a matter of polit-
ical and moral debate. Value neutrality therefore possesses a double meaning in action
sociology. It refers to the methodological isolation of values in order to neutralize their influ-
ence upon research; and it also refers to the abstinence of sociology from engaging as bear-
ers of scientific knowledge into the debate around ultimate values.

References

Benjamin, W. (1970) Charles Baudelaire, London, Verso
Benjamin, W. (1999) The Arcades Project, Harvard, Belknap
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