The Sociology of Industry

Richard Brown, John Child, Dr S R Parker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9780043011294
• eBook ISBN: 9781134999354
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book provides an excellent introduction to the sociology of industry. It comprises of three sections, which in turn address: the relation between industry and other sub-systems or institutions in society; the internal structure of industry and the roles people play within that structure; the social actions of individuals and groups within an organisational structure. It is an excellent resource for students of sociology who have an interest in its application to the 'world of work'.

Chapter 1
Industrial Sociology: Perspectives and Models

Industrial sociology is an important and fascinating subject. Its importance is obvious, since the world of work and the patterning of industrial structures and economic processes profoundly shape the kind of people we are, our social identities and life styles, and the kind of society in which we live. The social, economic and political organisation of industrial society, and the perceptions, attitudes and experiences of its members interact in a complex way. Understanding this complexity is what sociology is about, while a particular concern with industrial and economic structures and experiences is the focus of industrial sociology. This is the fascination of the subject. For in posing the question ‘What is industrial sociology?’ we immediately confront the main. dilemmas and questions posed by sociology about contemporary society, its conflicts, shared values and aims and the direction of its development.

Is our society best understood in terms of power groupings, each competing for social and economic resources, increasingly polarised in their interests and objectives? Or is it one in which the basis of power is diffuse, in which capital and labour stagnate and lose relevance together in the face of new groupings, definitions and interests? Is our society one characterised by alienation, by a profound sense of inequality and the futility of work? Or is it one in which there is the potential for ‘more participation and involvement, more flexible life styles, more fulfilment…a recognition that technology is not just the servant of profit, that large-scale organization may be inefficient in human terms, that social class divisions are not inevitable?’ (Smith, 1976, p. 21). Is it a society in which class thinking dominates people’s views of themselves and their lives, or one in which class analysis simplifies and distorts social interests as experienced and explained? Is it a society of new freedom and liberty (Dahrendorf, 1975), of justice without bondage? Or is it one in which liberty is declining in the pursuit of equality?

These are exciting and crucial questions. They pose acute dilem mas for the social scientist. Consequently one of the main tasks of this chapter is to pinpoint some attempts to come to grips with such issues. Of special concern is the inherent radicalism of some sociological stances and often their explicit ideological underpinnings. It will be noted that both the meaning of ‘industrial’ and the nature of ‘society’ are often intertwined with the content of ‘sociological radicalism’ and commitment to social action and a changed social order. These links can best be examined by taking two themes; the nature of sociological radicalism and the nature of sociological models.

SOCIOLOGICAL RADICALISM

The content of sociological studies is what seems to provoke most controversy outside the subject, social investigation itself providing evidence of the need for change, particularly in the acquisition and distribution of social, economic and political resources in society. Every batch of research findings reveals some new injustice: workers alienated by dehumanising technology; the tendency towards bureaucracy and secrecy of large-scale organisation; the violence of much family life; the persistence of sharp inequalities of wealth and life chances; the apparently unaccountable nature of much local and regional planning; in general, the inhuman use of human beings, their potential unrealised, and their hopes and ideals frustrated. Almost all detailed research creates anger or dismay among defenders of the status quo. Objective description of nearly every institution, organisation or group uncovers situations and patterns of behaviour which are at best irrational and at worst destructive of human choice. There is little wonder that in part the thrust of sociology is seen as radical, particularly of a leftish ideological brand.

How is it that sociology seems to confront existing social, economic and political orders with such a radical critique? In part it derives from a nineteenth-century European tradition which combined an analysis of the impact of industrial capitalism with a scientific mode of inquiry into human behaviour. It was a logical step from the scientific and empirical analysis of physical phenomena to applying the same model to people themselves and the patterns of social organisation which they created. Industrialisation was the central change to be examined and explained, so it became the target of criticism. Sociology developed amid the social upheavals and revolutionary ferment of a new social and political consciousness which challenged inherited property and dynastic marriage as the twin pillars of capitalism, and heralded the good society as one of common ownership and equality. Marx was not to know the consequences of such a polemic.

Max Weber saw the dangers, both to individual freedom and the integrity of social science, of such an attack upon industrial capitalism. Industrialism itself was an outcome of the growth of rationalism. Substantive rationality could be seen through the growth of science with the consequent secularisation of values and the ‘disenchantment of the western world’. Functional rationality was evident with the growth of bureaucracy, the dominance of hierarchical authority structures. Individual freedom was threatened, not so much by monopoly of the means of production by a ruling elite as by the massive and potentially lethal growth of bureaucracy. Weber also doubted the economic determinism which was central to Marx’s polemic against capitalism. Human culture was not simply a spin-off from the economic system, neither was history simply a refraction of the class struggle. Human ideas and values were more complex than that and played a creative rather than a dependent role. It was not only economic forces with their attendant division of labour, financial institutions and the growth of rationalism which explained industrialism, but also the vision of the Protestant ethic of thrift, and this-worldly asceticism. Emile Durkheim also articulated the thesis that division of labour in society, the fragmentation of tasks and roles, was the source of both inequality and patterns of social organisation (Giddens, 1971). The basis of consensus changes as society becomes more complex; division of labour increases the likelihood of an anomic social order; values are no longer shared and members become detached from their basic reference groups. At the same time the structure of society may divide into competing interests and values with only the law acting as a mediating and containing force, standing between the anarchic elements that would tear society apart.

The radicalism of sociology derives, in part, from this nineteenth-century baptism of fire. Diagnosis of the ills of early industrial capitalism at least gives credence to the view that sociology has two aims: the existential liberation of the individual, and the revolutionary liberation of society. As Peter Berger (1971, p. 2) suggests, however, ‘the relationship between sociology and freedom is not as simple, or as cheerful as the radicals would have us believe’. Understanding that relationship requires some discussion of the second major issue with which the nineteenth-century theorists were absorbed: the extent to which the study of man and society could be a science, adopting a rigorous conceptual framework, showing clear causal links between phenomena, verifying those links by testing and measurement and building up a body of laws similar in their level of applicability and universality to those of natural science.

Marx, Weber and Durkheim, as examples of the classical European tradition, were preoccupied with the scientific status of sociology, and the viability and desirability of separating fact from value; they were concerned about what Mills has called the possibility of an ‘autonomous sociology’ (Mills, 1959). Marx explicitly rejected that form of rationalism which separates the inquirer from the subject of his inquiry, wanting not just to analyse the world, but to change it. Of the three theorists under discussion, Marx perhaps stands alone in his rejection of the viability, let alone desirability, of separating fact from value, the emancipation of man from the purpose of philosophy. As he declares in his Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: ‘Philosophy can be realised by the abolition of the proletariat, the proletariat can only be abolished by the realisation of philosophy.’ Marx’s commitment to a particular model of society, a particular view about the influence of the economic system, about the causes of alienation, and about the relationship between knowledge and action, leads one to sympathise with MacRae’s comment that The influence of Marx on sociology has been great and is perhaps still increasing; in my judgment he was not a sociologist, and his influence has been unfortunate… he could not be a sociologist, for sociology is a form of inquiry, and he already knew’ (1965). Certainly Marx was not in that tradition which distinguished value freedom from value relevance, which separated the discipline of sociology from the ethics of the practitioner, which accepts the possibility of objective knowledge and the necessity of refutability. As such, science as the tradition of rational inquiry, empirical assessment and critical impartiality finds little place in Marx’s works.

Weber’s contribution to the status of sociology as a science is considerable. His position can be characterised by three injunctions: always separate statements of fact from valuations; never pretend to derive evaluations from statements of fact alone (social science cannot demonstrate what ought to be or what one should want); never use the pursuit of objectivity as an excuse for moral indifference. Weber regarded social reality as infinitely variable. The task of sociology was to establish a conceptual framework which was adequate logically and at the level of meaning. The ‘ideal-type’ was useful both for historical explanation and understanding the action of the hypothetical actor. Meaning was a causal component in action. Weber argued that ‘sociology is the science which attempts the interpretative understanding of social action so as to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects’ (Weber, 1949). The paradigm of science as objective rational inquiry was, for Weber, crucial and informed his formulation of the nature of social action, his assessment of the historical development of industrialism and his view of the appropriateness of the methods of natural science for understanding human society.

Durkheim’s view about the appositeness of the scientific model of knowledge to an understanding of the relationship between man and society is undoubted. Sociology was concerned with ‘social facts’; social facts are ‘things’ amenable to the techniques of quantification and measurement of natural science. Durkheim was concerned with empirical postulates from empirical induction, even though such empiricism was tied closely to some form of organicism, some view of society as existing independently of particular individuals; further ‘sociology can be defined as the science of institutions, of their genesis and of their functioning’ (1895). Durkheim thus argued for causal analysis of social phenomena, against psychological reductionism, in general a strongly positivistic stance believing that the methods of natural science were applicable to the social world.

Sociologists are divided about both of the foregoing issues. How can sociology be value-free? How far are the methods and aims of science applicable to understanding human intention and behaviour? Perhaps something can be said about the second issue before exploring further the question of ideology in sociology and some available sociological models. Science has two distinct aims: to develop a body of knowledge about the physical world, its evolution, composition and structure; and to discover underlying laws, universal patterns and trends. Sociology shares these aims. It persistently attempts to apply to social life a scientific curiosity, to assess the evolution, composition, structure and effects of, for example, particular social deprivations, inequalities, and changes. Sociological research thus can be disquieting to defenders of the status quo. It is obvious perhaps that the radicalism of sociology stems, in part, from the debunking role it plays as a consequence of its persistent curiosity about the social world.

Sociology has yet to reach the point where it can claim to have discovered many universal laws, but it can certainly point to lawlike trends and some fairly universal characteristics of human behaviour and society. One important factor which restricts such universality is the fundamental difference between the subject-matters of the social and natural sciences. Human intentions and actions are not easily assessed and quantified. Motivations and interests intermesh in ways not obvious from what people do, or necessarily from what they say, or even from what people think they say and do. Also situations vary considerably so that the same actions can mean something quite different in different contexts. The relative passivity and ‘hard’ quantification of physical phenomena contrasts sharply with the reflexive, conscious and choice-related behaviour of people, knitted into networks of relationships, shaping and being shaped by situations and roles which change over time, pursuing multiple goals and developing distinct selves and identities through interaction. The sociologist does not have such a handy piece of equipment as an ‘atom-smasher’ with which to crack the kernel of social reality! Only by careful participant observation, comparative model-building, statistical analysis and sociological imagination can the sociologist begin to describe and explain particular causes and their linkage to particular effects. Some sociologists would argue that even such minimal linkages are impossible to make because, most fundamentally, human consciousness cannot be made amenable to causal assessment. Human intentions and consciousness are ‘internal’ to the individual, the only aspect that can be ‘known’ is human behaviour which is external and observable. The debate is quite a fierce one, however, in general, it does not result in the absence of systematic methodology and model-building along the lines of the natural sciences.

By now it should be clear that a sociological assessment of the scope of work and occupational life, of industrial and economic organisation, does raise central conceptual and empirical issues. Is it possible to develop a conceptual framework which does not a priori commit the sociologist to an ideological stance simply by virtue of the concepts used? To put the question another way: how far is the objectivity of explanation pre-empted by the ideological underpinnings of different frameworks of analysis, particularly, in this case, the Marxist indictment of a society in which a market economy shapes work attitudes and experiences? Graeme Salaman has posed the links in the following ways:

‘To understand work in any society it is necessary to understand the nature of that society. Whether or not a society is a capitalist one (and the question of the utility and applicability of that concept) is an important consideration in any analysis of work events and arrangements. After all, class is not simply a way of describing structured differences in life chances; it is also a method of understanding the nature of a society and an economy.’ (1975, p. 11)

If one starts out with such a method of understanding, then subsequent analysis tends to focus on some questions and problems rather than others. That in itself is defensible as the proclivity of a particular sociologist; it should not however be confused with the discipline of sociology which involves consideration of different, often competing, conceptual and empirical claims. The competition of different frameworks, as Bryant suggests, is likely if only because

‘there are two seemingly inexhaustible sources of conceptual variation in sociology. One is the ambiguous or multi-faceted character of social relations and exchanges which enables both men in the course of their ordinary lives, and sociologists in their analyses, to interpret the same relations differently. The other is the unending variation in forms of social life. In both cases conceptual variation constitutes and reflects differences in social life and is not necessarily to be deplored whatever damage it does to hopes for simple cumulation in sociology comparable to the cumulation in the natural sciences.’ (1976, p. 344)

In this book the aim is to steer away from overcommitment to any one conceptual framework. All analysis of human society and behaviour requires a framework of values so as to make sense of what happens, since being human means using a symbolic framework of language; even the most neutral concepts are normative. However ideological commitment means something rather different. It means claiming truth for a particular model; it means subsuming reality into one integral perspective; it means believing one has arrived, open-endedness is over. Doubt gives way to certainty; the ideologue has stepped off the edge clutching his balloons, expecting to fly. Within social science there are several such models, each with heroes, disciples, creeds and flying-kits; sociology can be, however, an important solvent of ideology. As a discipline it thus is important that it is informed by a critical rationalism which has not sold out to capitalism, Marxism or utopianism. The need is for a radical stance

‘which refuses to comply uncritically with abstract society or engage in gnostic intoxication. That means it is Intellectual’ in that it remains within the tradition of scientific rationalism, and ‘ascetic’ in that it refuses to reduce human existence to emotional subjectivism…which remains critical but abstains from ideological commitment.’ (Zijderveld, 1972, pp. 46–7)

The stance is the radical one of critical rationalism. It means accepting the principle of uncertainty. It means accepting that the discipline of sociology ‘must be value free…the sociologist has no doctrine of redemption to bring into the political arena. What he has to contribute is the critical intelligence that is, or should be, the foundation of his discipline’; moreover, ‘there are those who are still willing to commit themselves militantly to reason’ (Berger, 1971).

SOCIOLOGICAL MODELS

The general thrust of discussion thus far has suggested that radicalism in sociology does impinge on the structure and content of models developed; the politico-economic critique of capitalism and the concern with both the nature of social order and the meaning of social action have provided important foci of attention. These foci have resulted in several distinct kinds of explanation and levels ...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• STUDIES IN SOCIOLOGY
• INTRODUCTION TO FOURTH EDITION
• CHAPTER 1: INDUSTRIAL SOCIOLOGY: PERSPECTIVES AND MODELS
• PART ONE: INSTITUTIONS AND SYSTEMS
• PART TWO: ORGANISATIONS AND ROLES
• PART THREE: ASPECTS OF OCCUPATIONS
• BIBLIOGRAPHY