Weberian

Theoretical Perspectives: Weberian

Key ideas: 

• Structuration (Social Action and Social Structure)
  
• Pluralism
  
• Market position (economic dimension of stratification)
  
• Conflict (across class, gender, age, ethnicity, region, etc.).
  
• Class (Market position), Status and Party (organised power) = basis for stratification
  
• Life Chances
  
• Status groups and Interest groups
  
• Bureaucracy
  
• Modernisation and Rationalisation
  
• Power (coercive and authority types)
  
• Objectivity (personal) and Subjectivity (Verstehen or "empathy")
  
• Multi-causal analysis (e.g. Religion and Capitalism)
  
• Meanings and Interpretations
  
• Ideal Type
  
• Value freedom
  
  

Key Names: Weber, Dahrendorf, Giddens, Haralambos, Goldthorpe / Lockwood

Key Criticisms: 

• Over-emphasis on motives, interpretations of individuals
  
• Emphasis on subjective interpretations of individuals downgrades importance of social structures
  
• Theoretical separation between Structure and Action not empirically justifiable
  
• Impossible to clearly identify social classes
  
• Fatalistic view of materialism, bureaucracy and Capitalism (successful Communist revolution impossible)
  
• Can social structures be reduced to individual actions and motivations?
  
• Over-emphasis on cultural conditions and changes at expense of economic conditions and changes.
  
  

Key Critics: Newby and Lee, Crompton, Marshall, Abercrombie and Urry.