[p2p-research] paper : relationship of sociology and the general process of consciousness of society

Sat Dec 29 07:27:10 CET 2007

interesting

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson at gmail.com>
Date: Dec 29, 2007 11:36 AM
Subject: relationship of sociology and the pdf - paper : relationship of
sociology and the general process of consciousness of society
T
*Dear friends ,

I found a very interesting PDF file - the link and some pasted text below ,
and also in attachment

It goes through the understanding of the evolution of conciousness of
society related to structural developments in the complexity of society
going through differentiation , and then a network society...

--------

Sociological and Pedagogical Reflections on the Chances
of Human Beings Under the Qualitatively Structural
Changes of the World System

Klaus Kuhnekath and Heinz Sünker
*
http://www.krepublishers.com/02-Journals/T-Anth/Anth-00-Special%20Issues/Anth-SI-01-Anth-Trends-App-Web/Anth-SI-01-15-175-188-Kuhnekath-K/Anth-SI-01-15-175-188-Kuhnekath-K-Text.pdf

wikipedia link in relation to * " differentiation "*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differentiation_(sociology)<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differentiation_%28sociology%29>

There are four *Types of Differentiation * *Segmentation, Stratification,
Center-Periphery, and Functional
*
wikipedia link in relation to "* information society *"*
*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_society*
*
*

excerpts of pdf file :*

*Not only partial
theories have to be revised, but above all, the
complex connection between theories *.

In spite of these questions, there seems to be,
in connection to Rene König, another problem
that is of great importance. One which refers
directly to *the relationship of sociology and the
general process of consciousness of society.* The
question simply is, if whether this relationship
has stayed immovably the same, or if it maybe
did change under the pressure of the changing
social structure.

But enlightenment
also in the sense of Kant means "emancipation
of man from his self caused mental immaturity",
which raises the opinion that the* function of
sociology compared to societal consciousness is
not only cognitive - distantiated but also participative.*

Enlargement of consciousness in the mentioned
theoretical-practical double sense can
perhaps be called a process of identification or
self-finding, which surely has integrative importance.
*"Consciousness is everything", is
Heydorn's conclusion at the end of his article
on survival. This conclusion rests on the notion
that thought processes which demythologize
society* – supported and encouraged by its rational
structure – *are both necessary and possible*,
and on the insights that humans can only become
subjects by mentally penetrating their
material conditions, through their capacity (for
action), and then transforming them.

1. At the beginning of the 19th century it
was already observed that *a new type of structure
was starting to develop out of a combination
of two processes: dissociation of communality
and specialisation. * In the first process an
increasing number of functions of local and
municipal life and work communities are being
outsourced: primarily politics, law, economy,
science and education are being dissociated from
communality and increasingly regulated
through overlapping mechanisms. At the same
time, in the second process, these areas are becoming
more independent, own spheres with
their own logic dominated by new experts and
elite, so called "functional elite". Heydorn interprets
this as the ,"transition from the educated
to the experts" and, "from the educated
bourgeoisie to functional elite".
Everyone of these spheres now develops its
own views of the world and dynamics of growth,
which the communal ways of life just have to
obey. This process which sociologists today call
*"functional differentiation"* has been progressing
up to the present date in the sense that it
has encompassed the entire world. So today we
have a world-political, world-economical,
world-scientific and increasingly, a world-legal
system.

...

Special about this new form of differentiation
is, that in principle with each prevailing
perspective of a subsystem, *the entire world can
be made to a topic: for instance, everything can
be looked at and treated under the perspective
of money *, as can be seen in the example of education.

2. Closely connected to the first is the second
structural element: The capitalistic mode
of production. *This mode of production can only
fully develop when the economy can free itself,
with the help of the process of functional differentiation,
of the restraints of religion, moral and
education, national regulations and restrictions
through laws. In regard to functional differentiation
there is a dissociation of communality. *
The development of the capitalistic principle
with its orientation of endless accumulation and
way of seeing as many things as possible as
goods, like the establishment of the World Education
Market, stands for a process of dispersal
of self-economy in the hands of the communities

3. The third, main structural element is that
of organisation.

...

Modern society, for Schimank (1997), is an organisation
society in the sense, that *generally all areas of
life are affected by organisations and that these
have progressed almost everywhere to decisive
producers of achievement and decision makers.*
Organisations are taking over the part of the
old corporations and associations. Its specific
feature, among other things, lies in the aspect
that *they can concentrate on specific, very restricted
purposes, that they are assigned purely
instrumental structures, and that they create a
very own category of persons, the so called "legal
persons"*. These characteristics, among others,
contribute to the fact that action and consequences
of action can be attributed to these
organisations. This has two consequences:
Firstly, organisations can make profit and accumulate
it to capital. *Secondly, personnel and
members of organisations undergo a relieve of
responsibility because it can be said that something
was done not as a human being but rather
as a holder of an office or as personnel.

*...

All three principles of structure – functional
differentiation, capitalistic way of production
and organisation – have to do with a
specialisation which has enabled the building
up of the great complexity of the modern world,
through the apparent paradox that so many
things do not have to be taken into account.

*So the complexity arises out of simplification*.

Everyone
of these structural complexes of modern
society has this in common, above that, an individual
societal "function". Because of this, everyone
of these characteristics of structure has
its own problems, which in combination add up.
"All three principles increase the complexity of
modern society to a great extent, but all three
are 'dumb' principles, even though...most
people, and most scientists will claim otherwise"
(Türk, 1998: 9).

All three principles have the
*dumbness of an extremely limited problem
awareness capacity. One which can only see itself.*

"The common feature of the dumbness of
these three complexes of structure is *the abstraction
from concrete persons, their needs, problems,
and social relations.* In other words: These
complexes of structure create, up to the point
unknown, a complexity of the social world, but
this is a complexity of the institutional complexes
themselves, not the complexity of human
existence. *The complexes of structure cannot
capture, regulate, or control their self-created
complexity out of exactly the same reason with
which they create this complexity*: Because of
their abstract selectivity and particularity. Every
intervention of political, economical, and
technical nature thus creates a gigantic surplus
of consequences. *All great problems of the
present day are brought about by these structures.
Not only technologies create risks, but also
societal structures and principles"* (Türk, 1998:
10).

...
*
This institutional
similarity is economically and politically
necessary and enforced if one wants to participate
in the world system at all, i.e. every one is
forced to take part. "This homogenisation also
is, from a viewpoint of evolutions-theory, extremely
unintelligent" (Türk, 1998: 12).

*a)
There is a *national and global process of progressing
differentiation between the rich and the
poor,* b) In connection to that, we have a *severe
process of differentiation in the claims of natural
resources*, c) we can find another new type
of process of downgrading: *a process of increased
exclusion of increasingly greater parts
of the world population from the system of paid
labour.* At the same time an equal type of actual
prevention of the return to substantial communal
self-economies takes place. *"Everyone is
included in the institutional arrangement of the
modern world system but at the same time, very
many people are excluded from considerable
participation in the sub-systems of economy* , etc.
The social sciences today analyse this phenomenon
under the terms of 'inclusion' and 'exclusion',
whereas one can speak of *an 'excluding
inclusion'.

...

There
are hardly any forms of existence outside of the
system which is institutionally enforced" (Türk
1998: 14).

Where **in earlier times there was a sort of
"collective consciousness" which allowed it to
grasp society as an unity in spite of strongest
inner differentiation, and this in a cognitive as
well as experimental sense, today this is becoming
more and more impossible and, under the
structural conditions of "globalisation as domination"
(Schäfer, 2000), this is becoming obsolete.*

...

Out of this arises *the image
of over-differentiation and complication *
which we started out with
.
*With this, a whole new function of sociological
theory has become visible, which Rene König
has labelled the "integration function".*

*"Because the complexity of the developed
industrial societies, after establishing
themselves, has reached a quality until now unimaginable,
integration isn`t possible not only
on ethnical, but also on a social, economical and
national-institutional level" *, as König writes in
his comment to the findings of his already mentioned
Handbook.* Integration can, so to speak,
only be enacted "in the mind".* Since in view of
the qualitative structural changes of the world
system,* the symbolic integration does not suffice
anymore,* highly complex political myths
like globalisation and the free market economy
are taken on instead. "In the fight for the undivided
power of what is called the market, that is
money,* the 'theory of globalisation' is the central
symbolic weapon. This 'theory' is an extremely
effective legend and is important because
it surrounds itself with the air of reason.

*Here we want
to point to Castells (1996)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Castells

, in regard to several
facts and trends, which the prophets of globalization
can call upon. "Our exploration of emergent
social structures across domains of human
activity and experience leads to an overarching
conclusion: *as a historical trend, dominant functions
and processes in the information age are
increasingly organized around networks. Networks
constitute the new social morphology of
our societies, and the diffusion of networking
logic substantially modifies the operation and
outcomes in processes of production, experience,
power, and culture.* While the networking form
of social organization has existed in other times
and spaces, the new information technology
paradigm provides the material basis for its pervasive
expansion throughout the entire social
structure. Furthermore, I would argue that this
networking logic induces a social determination
of a higher level than that of the specific social
interests expressed through the networks: the
power of flows takes precedence over the dynamics
of each network vis-à-vis others are critical
sources of domination and change in our
society: a society that, therefore, we may properly
call *the network society, characterized by
the preeminence of social morphology over social
action"* (Castells, 1996: 469).

...

*"Integration would then not be achievable anymore
on an institutional level but only in the
context of a new philosophy which however, is
not anymore about "being" and "becoming" but
rather about the chances of human beings under the outlined conditions of
existence" (König,
1979: 369).

*As can be seen in the following considerations,
the structural characteristics of the
chances of human beings, which can be derived
from sociological analysis and summed up in
the words of Castells: *„Our societies are increasingly
structured around a bipolar opposition
between the Net and the Self" * (Castells, 1996:
3), *

*can be depicted in the pedagogical reflections
concerning the relationship between pedagogy
and politics, *understanding the political
process itself as a process of universal education
*(see Sünker, 1994).

...

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