Sociological view on human being

Human being: an objectivist and a subjectivist approach

Social scientists are interested to understand what a human being is. Different theorists follow different stands to define human beings. The work of the philosopher Rene` Descartes is quite popular in this respect. He argued that a human is a thinking thing (a res cogitans) but which has a body (a res extensa) attached to it. He distinguished the ‘object’ which refers to the world of objects with height, width, depth, weight, etc and the ways those objects interact and the ‘subject’ which refers to conscious mind. These are according to Descartes two completely different orders of being. His subject-object dualism, gives us the first two potential starting points for sociological analysis, an objectivist and a subjectivist approach. According to objectivist approach we focus on the objective world ‘out there’ which is beyond the conscious mind. In this respect, the ‘conscious mind’ is put to one side not as a central issue to study. On the other hand, according to subjectivist approach we focus on the conscious mind and we put the objective world to one side.

At the beginning, the essay will try to explain what Durkheim said about the relationship of individual and society in his study of suicide. As alternative views, Edmund Husserl’s and Max Weber’s argument on subjectivism will be presented. Moreover, Goffman’s work on stigma will be explained as his work has tried to make a bridge between subjectivist and objectivist approach.

According to French sociologist Emile Durkheim, human beings, are essentially social beings. However, he does not believe that society is the sum of its individuals. He believes that society is "sui-generis", which means it is an entity in its own right. He argued that ‘society’ is more than sum of its parts. This is called social holism (whole-ism). Therefore, he did not start with individuals. He started with societies first and deduced from them the social properties of individuals. For Durkheim, society is in factual and not something that emerges from the interaction of individuals.

He argued that the fundamental principle of sociological methods is entirely based on the statement that social facts must be studied as things as he believed they are external to individual. The individual is dominated by a moral reality which is termed as ‘collective reality’. (Thompson, 1985:92) On the contrary, collective reality is not influenced by individual. His sociology focuses on the objective world beyond the conscious mind. He puts the ‘subject’ - the conscious mind to one side. He argues that ‘social facts’ in the objective world are not the outcome of the working of conscious minds. Social facts are primitive facts which refer to different elements of society which can be studied independently of individual nature. (Morrison, 1995) According to him, these facts come in three categories such as, ‘morphology’, ‘institutions’ and ‘collective conscience’. These facts are like primary colours which cannot be explained (created) by reference to the working of a conscious mind (i.e. secondary colours). He argues that the subjective – the working of the conscious mind - is the product of social facts in the objective world. Hence, it is not a primordial fact about humans. Moreover, the individuality of the subject – the conscious mind – is the product of social facts in the objective world.

He tried to study the rate of suicide in different European countries as a social phenomenon to demonstrate his theory. He was trying to search the reasons of suicide by applying the theory of objectivism. In order to achieve that, he left individual to one side and tried to examine the different social environments such as religious beliefs, family, political society, occupational groups, etc as a function of which, variations in suicide occur. After doing so, he returned to individual to study how these general causes become individualized to produce the result of suicide. (Thompson, 99) Durkheim argued from the data he gathered on suicide that each society had a ‘suicide rate’ which could be studied independently. After studying the rates, he observed that they varied from society to society and that the number of suicidal deaths in each of the countries did not change dramatically and appeared to be stable. The stability of the rates within a given society indicated that social forces were operating to produce the yearly accuracy of rates. This led Durkheim to reason that the predisposing cause of suicide lay not within the psychological motives of the individual. On the contrary, it lies within the social framework of the society. (Morrison, 1995)

He argued that different religious denominations affect society, for example, in his time in really Catholic countries, suicide rate was not very high, and on the other hand, in protestant countries it was high in comparison to the former. So it can be argued that, different religious beliefs as social fact have worked as a significant factor in the life of individuals. He has also investigated different aspects of life such as domestic life - family, political life to argue that these as social facts work as a powerful counter agent against suicide. Moreover, suicide varies inversely with the degree of integration of the social groups to which the individual belongs. When he is faced with excessive individualism he tends to commit ‘egoistic suicide’. However, if he is too strongly integrated in society then suicide becomes a duty for him. This kind of suicide is termed as ‘altruistic suicide’ by Durkheim. There is another one which refers the degree of moral regulation. If moral regulation is too low, ‘anomic suicide’ takes place. Quite the reverse, if moral regulation is too high, then there tends to be ‘fatalistic suicide’. (Thompson, 1985)

According to him, society controls individuals in different ways. For example, economic system and religion can be used to control individuals in society. However, in contemporary societies, religion has lost most of its power. (Thompson, 1985) Society imposes restrictions on human desires and constitutes a regulative force [which] plays the same role for moral needs which the organism plays for physical needs. When social regulations break down, the controlling influence of society on individual propensities is no longer effective and individuals are left to their own devices. Such a state of affairs Durkheim calls ‘anomie’. This is a term that refers to a condition of ‘normlessness’ in a whole society or in some of its component groups. It characterizes a condition in which individual desires are no longer regulated by common norms and where, as a consequence, individuals are left without moral guidance in the pursuit of their goals. (http://www.hewett.norfolk.sch.uk/) However, Durkheim’s work suffers from the typical problem of an objectivist approach – it decentres the subject, the conscious mind as it put the object the world ‘out there’ at the centre of its study.

The subjectivist approach, in order to study society and individual has solved this problem by putting the subject- the conscious mind at the heart of the study. This view argues that ‘society’ is not a set of natural conditions but is a complex of socially constructed meanings. It is comprised of ideas and interpretations that human actors hold about it. Moreover, in order to discover these meanings it requires an investigation of individuals’ subjective interpretation. (Johnson, Dandeker & Ashworth, 1984, 76) Descartes’s idea of subject-object dualism argues that ‘subject’ and ‘object’ are two different things. The subject – the conscious mind – is connected to the object – the world ‘out there’ via the senses. Edmund Husserl and Max Weber took different positions to explain how senses can give us an accurate picture. First the essay will discuss Husserl’ subjectivist idea in relation to individual and society.

In his study, Husserl put the object – ‘the world out there ‘– to one side and investigated the world as it appears ‘in here’ in consciousness. As a result, in contrast to objectivist view, the object ‘society’ gets decentred. By applying a method called ‘phenomenological reduction’ he makes three reductions. One of them is - he puts the object ‘the world out there’ to one side and concentrate on objects in consciousness. He isolates the components of consciousness, objects and acts. However, Husserl’s argument has a problem which is termed as ‘solipsism’ which refers to the fact that as one can only understand the world as it appears in his/her consciousness, it becomes difficult to investigate others view on society. It has a tendency to mix up others’ view (other’s way of seeing the society) with one’s own view of them.

Weber also starts from a subjectivist standpoint – he argues that action is the outward manifestation of a conscious mental state. Weber’s theory of action involves four central concepts and these are the concept of understanding or Verstehen, the concept of interpretive understanding, the concept of subjective meaning and the concept of social action. He argues that social action can be defined as occurring when the acting individual attaches a subjective meaning to an act and when it takes account of the behaviour of others and is thereby oriented in its course. (Morrison, 1995, 274) According to Weber, social action can be classified in four types. It may be instrumentally rational (zweckrational), value-rational (wertrational), affectual (especially emotional) and traditional action. Instrumentally rational action is determined by expectations as to the behaviour of objects in the environment and of other human beings. These expectations are used as means for the attainment of the actor’s own rationally pursued and calculated ends. Value-rational action is determined by a conscious belief in the value of some ethical, aesthetic, religious or other forms of behaviour. It is independent of its prospects of success. Affectual action is determined by actor’s specific affects and feeling states. The forth action, traditional action, is determined by ingrained habituation. (Dallmayr & McCarthy, 1977, 53) In explaining different kind of action, Weber has skilfully avoided the problem of solipsism. In respect to instrumentally rational action, end and the choice of means will be the same as a result there is no need to look into individual’s mind. However, except value rational action, other kind of actions shows difficulty in respect to that. Moreover, Weber himself recognize , his argument still creates some problem as the vast number of actions done by human can be termed as traditional action. (http://www.city.londonmet.ac.uk)
After explaining Durkheim and Weber’s argument on the relationship of society and individual, the essay will now try to discuss Erving Goffman’s idea. Goffman as a sociologist has put an attempt to make a bridge between the both- objectivist and subjectivist approaches. First, what Goffman as an objectivist argued on relationship has put forwarded. Like Durkheim, Goffman argued that society governs how we picture ourselves and other people.

As he stated in his book on Stigma,
“Society establishes the means of categorizing persons and the complement of attributes felt to be ordinary and natural for members of each of these categories.” (Goffman p.1-2)

So here Goffman argues that society decides and sets a set of rule on how we as an individual in a society perceive about us and others. The norms and values created by society become individuals’ norms and values. Moreover, society insists that this is the normal and correct way to perceive the world around us. According to him, people have two kind of identities, ‘virtual identities’ and ‘actual identities’, the first one refers to the right attributes society expect people to have in particular encounters. The latter refers to the actual way an individual behave, it may differ from virtual identity and as a result it creates problems. As Goffman argued, at this point the issue of stigma occurs. However, the process of stigma depends on the context. Like as he stated in his book,
“Note that weather or not an attribute is a stigma is dependant on the situation: being black, female, middle-aged, a wheelchair user, Jewish, etc, will count as a stigma in some situations and not in others. We all bear a stigma in some situations, so we have all been on both sides of the fence.” (Goffman, p. 155-160)

Individuals in a society can be stigmatised according to their situation. The reason for which one can be treated as a stigmatised person varies from place to place.
Goffman has also tried to explain the issue of stigma from a subjectivist point of view. Dealing with stigmatised people is difficult as people cannot treat them normally like others. On the other hand, showing them direct sympathy can be seen negatively as if we are overstepping ourselves. However, here Goffman referred to things in the conscious mind which is totally oppose to Durkheim’s objectivist view. To explain the process of stigma, Goffman has made a subjectivist move. He gives an ethnographic account of some of the management strategies used by stigmatized people. There are a number of ways of dealing with this. For example: One can associate with people who are prepared to treat them normally in spite of their appearances, one can come out fighting, or one can be totally become indifferent. (Goffman, 1963) He has tried to explain the process of stigma from two different perspectives, objectivist and subjectivist views of sociology. According to first one, society force individuals to be stigmatised and the later argues that individuals, both normal and the stigmatised respond to the anguish of stigma and they generally do so in different ways. But the object still faces the subject - and it is not explained.

Durkheim in his work on suicide has placed society the object as his central point to study as he believed that the state of individuals like how they behave, deal with life etc can only be explained by the study of society in which they participate. Society controls individuals in order to maintain stability and social cohesion. However, individuals cannot be used effectively to explain society as he argued that society is more than the sum of its individuals. In contrast to that view, subjectivist view argues that it is the conscious mind, the subject which needs to be studied to explain what society stands for. The meaning given by the conscious mind can define the object ‘society’ as this view, mainly put forwarded by Husserl and Weber, suggests that society is the summation of individual living in it. However, Durkheim’s theory has some problems of its own as it decentres the subject ‘conscious mind’. On the other hand, subjectivism suffers from ‘solipsism’. Goffman has tried to make a bridge between these two approaches by applying the views in his work on stigma. In doing so, he argued from an objectivist strand that individuals are stigmatised by society and a subjectivist strand that individuals respond to the anguish of stigma according to their own ways.



Bibliography:


1. Weber, M., "Basic Sociological Terms", in Dallmayr, Fred R. and McCarthy, Thomas A., Understanding Social Enquiry (London: Notre Dame Press, 1977)
2. Thompson, K (1982). Readings from Emile Durkheim, London, Ellis Horwood/Tavistock ( Part four: Suicide)
3. Goffman, E. (1963) Stigma: notes on the management of a spoiled identity, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
4. Johnson, T. & Dandekar, C & Ashworth, C. (1984) The structure of social theory, The Macmillan press ltd (Chapter 3 & 5)

5. Morrison, K (1995) Marx Durkheim Weber, Sage publications London
(Chapter 3, 4 & glossary)

6. “Sociological theory Unit 1 (2004), Dr. Chris Rhodes

http://www.city.londonmet.ac.uk/~rhodes/so272(1)/272home.htm

7. “Individual and Society Durkheim and SUICIDE”,(02/02/04)
Sociology at Hewett,

http://www.hewett.norfolk.sch.uk/curric/soc/durkheim/durkw2.htm

8. “Extracts from Emile Durkheim”, Middlesex university (02/02/04)

http://www.mdx.ac.uk/www/study/xdur.htm