<center>1</center>
It may be strange to be offering an exposition of the ideas of Marx, Weber and Durkheim in an era when, so it is argued by some in the discipline, the ‘grand narratives’ of thought, as Lyotard (1984) terms overarching theoretical schemes, have lost their validity. New identities, new forms of knowledge, new patterns of social relationships, new sources of division and more, are all forcing a break, it is claimed that, with a past shaped by modes of thought originating over three hundred years ago during the Enlightenment. Marx, Weber and Durkheim are Victorian scholars and it is perhaps hard to grasp that they have anything of relevance to say to a world which has dramatically changed since their time.
Of course, there has been a prominent strand in sociological thought which is sensitive to the idea that the world and/or the discipline are both in an impending state of crisis. Indeed, a strong case can be made that such a sense was critical in the very formation of the discipline in the early nineteenth century as industrialism began to effect major changes in patterns of life throughout Europe. Later in that century, a young French Philosophy teacher was particular concerned with what he saw as the growing instability of social life. Long-established values and ways of life seemed to be breaking down as industrialization and urbanization transformed the society of his day. Where once the authority of church and monarchy had gone unquestioned, there now seemed to be no authority which could hold society together.
1 Questions
Historically speaking, the study of sociology theories is usually segmented as two epochs. Classical era, which starts from Comte, contains some of the most influential figures, such as Marx, Max Weber and Durkheim. It is not until the rise of Chicago School and some other scholars do the sociology step into the second phase. There are often some questions about the classical times and concerns on society transformation, in transiting from obeying majesty in every aspects to resisting authority, how do people unite together? How can they have a consistent or uniform values for making the society stable?
2 Transition
From pieces of works from Durkheim, we see the motivation of sociological thinking is not only drawn from a sense of impending crisis, but also originates from a formulation of what is, with strong justification, the central question of sociology itself, namely: how is social order possible?
mIt is perhaps to Marx, Weber and Durkheim we owe the greatest debt for the most systematic attempts to set out just how the question might be addressed. Their ideas are of enduring concern and relevance.
When post-structuralists told us that we need to abandon ‘meta narratives’, that is, the great theoretical schemes which attempt to comprehend vast tracts of reality, we also heard echos from Weber saying such schemes are indeed unsustainable, these knowledge contained is limited, provisional and they are generated from just in some particular point of view.
3 Durkheim
Employers and workers confronted each other with undisguised hostility, rates of crime were rising and individuals tend to see each other simply as means to achieve their own selfish ends. Suicides, too, were increasing as the old links to family and community grew weaker. The young Frenchman, says one commentator, was ‘haunted by the thought that modern society … was a fragile affair, a potentially unstable mix of elements that was always on the verge of dissolving into chaos’. His writings were an effort to try to understand how this state of affairs had risen so that it could be put right, stressing the ‘urgency of this task, as though he saw himself in a race against time with the gathering forces of anarchy’. The worried young thinker was Emile Durkheim, who addressed these problems in his first major work, on the Division of Labour in Society, published in 1893.
As we shall all see that, Functionalism fundamentally reflects thoughts of Durkheim whose assumptions are about nature of sociology and social life. It is Durkheim who pioneered the use of quantitative analysis, using statistical analysis to enhance the role of sociology as a rigorous science compared with speculations and impressions adopted by other social thinkers before him.
4 Marx
Widely regarded as ‘founding fathers’ of sociology, indeed, it would be hard to underestimate the influence of Marx in fields such as social stratification and mobility, education, political economy, the state, ideology, culture and media among others. Even non-marxist sociologists have been using the approaches of class analysis, repeatedly presenting concepts such as class consiousness, and alienation, in ways are clearly derived from marx’s writings.
5 Max Weber
Weber was no less committed to the development of sociology. He expressed concerns for the validity of viewing the societies as structures, as wholes which had properties independent of elements which composed of them. He also inaugurated a tradition of ‘interpretative’ sociology which takes human individuals, their ideas and their actions, as the starting point for sociological analysis. Weber’s rather pessimistic conclusions about the future industrialized, rationalized modern societies have echoed throughout the years, notably in the work of the Frankfurt School of critical theorists, such as Adorno, Maruse, Horkheimer and others, more recently, in the thought of habermas, widely regarded as their intellectual heir.
6 Counterparts
It is important, to bear in mind, that there are other scholars also have the same contribution like these three thinkers, figures such as Pareto, Spencer were influential in their day even if they are uncelebrated now. By contrast Georg Simmel and George Herbert Mead are begining to attract more attention than before.
The idea should be resisted that the trinity of Marx, Weber and Durkheim are the only ones who created sociology. It is not individuals who create forms of society, Durkheim argued, but forms of society which created individuals.
Individuals can never be simplified as puppets whose strings were pulled by invisible social forces, Weber wished to preserve the idea of the autonomous individual, nevertheless he insisted that the actions and beliefs can only be understood by taking account of specific cultural characteristics of social context.
Indeed one fundamental task of modern sociology is to reconcile the individual and the social, the person and the cultural, individual action and social structures.
7 Criticism
In 1992, the new republican published an article called The oldest Dead White European Males by Knox, which ironically criticized preoccupations in western society. The canon, which governs the common thinking way in the western world, affects deeply for understanding of contemporary society and social life. This trap which is named as Dead White European Males, in short DWEM.
It is also shown that none of these scholars, not even Marx, could pass contemporary tests of ‘political correctness’. We take the view, however, this does not invalidate their sociological ideas. For example, Marx and Engles, also have some ideas which can be linked with the contemporary critique of patriarchal society on the way in which capitalism depends on the unpaid but essential domestic work of women, or their reduction to status of property in the context of bourgeois family life.
