The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology

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THE PENGUIN DICTIONARY OF SOCIOLOGY Nicholas Abercrombie was born in 1944 and educated at The Queen's College, Oxford University, and the London School of Economics. He was employed as a research officer at University College London, before moving to the University of Lancaster first as lecturer and then as senior lecturer. He is now Professor of Sociology at the University of Lancaster. Professor Abercrombie has written books and articles on the sociology of knowledge, theory of culture, popular culture, sociological theory and class theory. These include Class, Structure and Knowledge and, with J. Urry, Capital, Labour and the Middle Classes. With other members of the Department of Sociology at Lancaster, he has written Contemporary British Society. Stephen Hill was born in 1946 and educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and the London School of Economics where he completed his Ph.D. in 1973. He is Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics where he has also held the posts of lecturer in sociology, lecturer in industrial relations and reader in sociology. He has written The Dockers and Competition and Control at Work, as well as many articles in his field. His main academic interests are social stratification and the sociology of management and industrial relations.Professor Hill is chief examiner for sociology at one of the major school examination boards. Bryan S. Turner was born in 1945 and attended the University of Leeds where he completed his BA (1966) and Ph.D. (1970). He was a lecturer in sociology at the University of Aberdeen from 1969 to 1974 and then at the University of Lancaster until 1978, when he returned to Aberdeen as senior lecturer and subsequently reader. In 1982 he was appointed to the chair of sociology at the Flinders University of South Australia, and in 1988 he became Professor of Social Science at the University of Utrecht. He subsequently became Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex. He is now Dean of Humanities at Deakin University, Australia. His publications include Weber and Islam, Marx and the End of Orientalism, For Weber,

Alienation

in cooperation with others by which people transformed the world outside themselves. The process of production is one of 'objectification', whereby men make material objects which embody human creativity yet stand as entities separate from their creators. Alienation occurs when, once objectified, man no longer recognizes himself in his product which has become alien to him, 'is no longer his own' and 'stands opposed to him as an autonomous power'. Objectification, however, only becomes alienation in the specific historical circumstances of capitalism. In capitalist society one group of people, capitalists, appropriates the products created by others. This is the origin of alienation. Marx saw alienation both as a subjective state as people's feelings of alienation — and as a structural category which described the social and economic arrangements of capitalism. Marx identified four particular manifestations of alienation, (i) The worker is alienated from the product of his labour, since what he produces is appropriated by others and he has no control over its fate. (2) The worker is alienated from the act of production. Working becomes an alien activity that offers no intrinsic satisfaction,that is forced on the worker by external constraints and ceases to be an end in itself, and that involves working at someone else's bidding as forced labour. Work in fact becomes a commodity that is sold and its only value to the worker is its saleability. (3) The worker is alienated from his human nature or his 'species being', because the first two aspects of alienation deprive his productive activity of those specifically human qualities which distinguish it from the activity of animals and thus define human nature. (4) The worker is alienated from other men, since capitalism transforms social relations into market relations, and people are judged by their position in the market rather than by their human qualities. People come to regard each other as reifications — as worker or as capitalist - rather than as individuals. Capital itself is the source of further alienation within a developed capitalist economy. This is because? capital accumulation generates its own 'needs' which reduce people to the level of commodities. Workers become factors in the operation of capital and their activities are dominated by the requirements of profitability rather than by their own human needs. Within a market economy, the rules which govern accumulation are those of the market place. 13

Confession (with M. Hepworth), Religion and Social Theory, The Body and Society, Citizenship and Capitalism, Equality and Medical Power and Social Knowledge. The three authors have collaborated extensively before and particularlyin writing The Dominant Ideology Thesis, Sovereign Individuals of Capitalism and Dominant Ideologies.

THE PENGUIN

DICTIONARY OF SOCIOLOGY Nicholas Abercrombie, Stephen Hill and Bryan S. Turner Third Edition PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London w8 517, England Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England First published 1984 Published simultaneously by Alien Lane Second edition 1988 Third edition 1994 5 7 9 10 8 6 Copyright © Nicholas Abercrombie, Stephen Hill and Bryan S. Turner, 1984, 1988, I994 All rights reserved Filmset in io/i2pt Monotype Bembo Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

CONTENTS

Preface

vii

How to use this dictionary

xii

Dictionary of Sociology

i

Bibliography

467

PREFACE A dictionary of sociology is not just a collection of definitions, but inevitably a statement of what the discipline is. It is also prescriptive in suggesting lines of development and consolidation. The problem of definition in a subject as diverse and dynamic as sociology is to strike a balance between an existing consensus, however fragile and temporary, and a developing potential. The unifying theme of this dictionary is our conviction that sociology is an autonomous, elaborated and vital discipline within the social science corpus. Our enthusiasm for the subject was sustained rather than diminished by the experience of seeking precision within the conflicting range of perspectives that constitute modern sociology. Our view of sociology as a result runs counter to the usual batch of criticisms mounted against the work of sociologists. Three negativeevaluations of sociology are frequently encountered; it is immature,riddled with unnecessary jargon and biased by extreme political persuasions. The notion that sociology is a young discipline — and hence inadequately developed - is a misconception which is probablybased on the assumption that sociology was invented during the expansion of university education in the i96os. In fact, sociology as a self-conscious, organized and independent discipline is well established. In order to establish the credentials of sociology, there is no need to trace the subject back to Aristotle or to the Islamic historian and legal theorist, Ibn Khaldun. The term 'sociology' was first systematically used in its modem sense in 1824 by the French writer Auguste Comte and came into wide circulation in his Cours de philosophic positive in 1838, replacing the older term 'physique sociale'. By the middle of the nineteenth century, small groups of intellectuals throughout Europe were busily engaged in promoting the 'new' discipline. In the late i88os, Emile Durkheim was teaching sociology courses at the University of Bordeaux, subsequently

Preface

gathering a brilliant group of sociologists around him at the Sorbonne, and founding the journal L'Annee Sociologique in 1898. Similar developments took place elsewhere in Europe. In Germany,early interest in sociology was stimulated by the Verein fur Sozialpolitik, whose journal the Archiv fur Sozialwissenschaften und Sozialpolitik dominated German sociology up to the outbreak of the First World War. The first classics of German sociology were published in the i88os - Gumplowicz's Grundriss der Soziologie (1883) and Toennies' Gemeinschaft und Gesellschqft (1889). Georg Simmel started a lecture course in sociology in 1894 at the University of Berlin which proved one of the most popular undergraduate courses. Max Weber, professor of economics at Freiburg and Heidelbergin the i89os, moved towards historical sociology and pioneered the comparative analysis of capitalist societies. The first major congresses in sociology were held at Frankfurt-am-Main in 1910 and in Berlin in 1912. In Italy, Roberto Ardito published his Sociologia in 1879, but the principal Italian contribution to classical sociology came from Vilfredo Pareto, whose Trattato di Sociologia Generate (1916) was an attempt to provide a systematic account of the sociological perspective. In Belgium, Guillaume de Greet publishedhis Introduction a la sociologie between 1886 and 1889. In America, particularly at the University of Chicago, sociology also enjoyed a vigorous foundation. Albion Small founded the American Journal of Sociology in 1895 and the American Sociological Society in 1905; the Publications of the American Sociological Society were first issued in 1907; and by 1910 most universities offered courses in sociology. This early development laid the foundations for the pre-eminent position which American sociology has held throughout most of the twentieth century. In Britain, Herbert Spencer (Study of Sociology, 1873), Benjamin Kidd (Social Evolution, 1894) and Patrick Geddes (Cities in Evolution, 1915) had an international reputation in early sociology, but sociologicalcourses and departments within the universities were slow to become established. A national Sociological Society was formed in 1904 and its annual publications eventually appeared as The SociologicalReview in 1908. In 1907, T. H. Hobhouse at the London School of Economics became the first British professor of sociology, holding the newly created Martin White Chair of Sociology in the Univer-

Preface

sity of London. As with other subjects, sociology expanded greatly in the i96os with the creation of a series of sociology departments in the new universities. The uneven development of sociology in Britain has often been explained by reference to the traditionalism, empiricism and individualism of British culture, but a more immediatecause may lie in the hostility of the academic establishment, especially at Cambridge and Oxford, towards the 'new' discipline. Much to the dismay of conservative academics, sociology was well established in university and secondary education by the mid 1970S, but the economic crisis of the i98os, the attitude of the Conservative Government towards university development and the negative approachof the Economic and Social Research Council„ towards sociology suggest that the future of British sociology is unpredictable.This dictionary was written in the context of this educational climate; it is intended to form part of the defence of academic sociology as an essential component of the modern curriculum. Part of the antipathy towards modern sociology is based on the belief that the language used by sociologists is barbaric, unnecessary or, worse still, a conceptual confidence trick. Once translated back into a common idiom, this sociological jargon would impress us only by its banality. However, every academic discipline, whether in the arts or sciences, has a specialized vocabulary by which it seeks to describe the phenomena to be studied without the judgemental implications which are inevitably tied to everyday discourse. The aim of sociology is to describe, understand and explain social reality with concepts which are abstract, neutral and unambiguous. To achieve this end, it develops a terminology which is specific to its purpose. In this case, it is difficult to see how sociology differs from other human sciences, or why it should. Modern economics has its own terminology that is not accessible to the non-specialist, for example 'marginal productivity', 'perfect competition' or 'consumer price index'. The same is true of linguistics and phonetics, witness 'morphosyntactic', 'lexeme', and 'Katz-Postal hypothesis'. Of course it is also true that sociology uses a vocabulary perfectly familiar in everyday English. However, difficulty may be caused to the lay reader because sociologists rightly give these terms a more technical meaning. The words themselves may be familiar, but their use is not. Perhaps it is unfortunate, therefore, that there are so few

Preface

genuine neologisms in sociology: on the whole, sociologists have been forced to adopt an existing vocabulary which is then stripped of its normative implications. This is not a perversion of the English language but a scientific necessity. The charge that sociological theory is simply jargon has little substance. A more important objection to sociology is that it is biased, where 'biased' usually means 'Marxist'. For such critics, sociology is socialism, masquerading as a social science. There is some weight to this charge, since, for example, Saint-Simon in the nineteenth century can be regarded as the founder of both sociology and socialism. The paradox is, however, that sociology is also regarded, particularly by its left-wing critics, as a conservative discipline which sought to revive social harmony in a world being torn apart by revolution, industrialization and religious decline. It is true that in the 1970s Marxism became an influential perspective in the social sciences generally, although it never achieved anything like a monopoly in the sociology curriculum. Two points can be made about this influence. First, Marxist sociology became one of the principal vehicles for sustained criticism of orthodox Marxism. For many Marxist sociologists, the scientific claims of Marxism never survived this critical inspection. Secondly, there are strong indications in the i98os, partly as a result of internal criticism within sociology, that the neo-Marxist paradigm has become a post-Marxist paradigm, with many sociologists showing a renewed interest in Weberian sociology, critical theory, hermeneutics and so forth. Sociology is a diverse, open and expanding subject, without any permanent commitment to any single perspective, and sociologists adhere to the conventions and procedures which in all disciplines guarantee, or at least promote, objectivity. Sociological propositions are open to public scrutiny, evaluation and refutation. Sociological evidence is collected by observation, experiment and surveys which are designed to ensure, as far as possible, reliability and replication. Unlike many public institutions, sociology as a professional disciplineis open to both internal and external inquiry. This dictionary makes no pretence that sociology is a unified approach to social phenomena. Indeed, we have made every effort to consider rival schools, controversial issues, contradictory definitionsand unresolved problems. Where terms are confused and

Preface

imprecise, we have said so. One reason for the existence of widespreadcontroversy in sociology is the fact that different national schools of sociology (in France and Germany, for example) have developed in very different directions. Some forms of sociology are very close to history and philosophy, while others have sought to be quantitative and experimental, taking experimental psychology and economics as models of social science. There is an important division between American sociology, which from its inception has regarded sociology as an exact science that produces 'hard' data and contributes to the formation of public policy, and European sociology,which has adhered more closely to its roots in certain philosophicaltraditions, stemming for example from Hegel, Marx and, more recently, Heidegger. European sociologists are more familiar with the notion that to be useful sociology has to be critical. Encompassingthis diversity within a single dictionary is difficult, but our aim has been to display the complexity of sociology rather than impose an arbitrary unity on it - a unity which in any case would be premature. Despite this lack of unity, sociology as both science and calling remains the main perspective on the central problems of living in an industrial and secular civilization. We wish to thank the following for their help in the preparation of this dictionary: Mavis Conolly, Wendy Francis, Jenny Law, Brian Longhurst, Colm O'Muircheartaigh, John Urry, Sylvia Walby, Alan Warde. For advice in the preparation of the Second Edition, we wish to thank Lynne Ashley, Basil Bernstein, John Mclntosh, John Robinson and Dennis Wrong.

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s B^ i S ?? I ^i 1 ^j 111 i i l i I i-l l li i ^o- I and consumer behaviour (Douglas and Isherwood, 1978). Her work is integrated by an interest in how groups respond to risk and uncertainty, and her intellectual development was significantly influenced by E. Evans-Pritchard's work (1937) on witchcraft (q.v.) among the Azande (Douglas, 1980). For example, in Purity and Danger (1966) she showed how notions about pollution help to establish social order against uncertainty and danger, and how the human body functions as a metaphor of social stability. She has also developed a theory of social relations which is referred to as the grid/group dichotomy (Douglas, i97ob). The group variable refers 126

- Dual Economy

to the strength of collective attachment to social units; the grid refers to social constraints on individuals which result from ascribed status (q.v.). She has also been critical of utilitarian theories of consumption (Douglas and Isherwood, 1978). Her other works include: The Leie of the Kasai (1963), Cultural Bias (1978), In the Active Voice (i982a) and Essays in the Sociology a/Perception (l982b). See: Body; Profane; Risk Society; Trust.

Dramaturgical. This approach within symbolic interactionism (q.v.) is particularly associated with E. Goffman (q.v.). The basic idea is that in interaction people put on a 'show' for each other, stage-managing the impressions that others receive. Social roles are thus analogous to those in a theatre. Thus people project images of themselves, usually in ways that best serve their own ends, because such information helps to define the situation and create appropriate expectations. See: Sociodrama.

Dual Career Families. Families in which both husband and wife have careers (q.v.).

Dual Consciousness. People are said to manifest a dual consciousnesswhen they hold two apparently inconsistent sets of beliefs at the same time. The term is most commonly applied to members of the working class in contemporary European societies, who have sets of beliefs formed by the dominant culture through the educationalsystem as well as different sets of beliefs generated by the experience of work and working-class life. The former type of belief is typically revealed in questionnaire research which tends to ask abstract questions, while the latter shows most clearly in practical activities. For example, it has been shown that many people will say, in response to social survey interviewers, that they disapprove of unofficial strikes, while participating in such strikes at their own workplace. See: Class Consciousness; Dominant Ideology Thesis; Cram-sci; Pragmatic Acceptance; Working Class.

Dual Economy. This term was originally associated with J. H. Boeke's analysis in the early twentieth century of economic growth in underdeveloped nations. European-owned plantations in Java, run along rational and efficient capitalist lines, coexisted with an indigenous agrarian economy where peasants made no effort to 127

Dual Labour Markets emulate the European model. This was a dual economy of advanced and backward sectors which remained distinct. Europeans were dominated by economic needs whereas the Javanese peasants had social needs. The economic laws valid for capitalist societies were not valid for dual economies where capitalism coexisted with a peasant economy embodying pre-capitalist social values and relationships.His theory is not entirely accepted, but his description of economies segmented into advanced and backward sectors continues to inform the study of developing societies. More recently the idea of dualism has been applied within advancedcapitalist economies, notably Japan and the United States. The structure of both economies is thought to embrace a 'core' sector of corporations that are large, prosperous and stable, and have sufficient economic power to manipulate their environments in order to reduce the disruptive effects of competition. There are also 'peripheries' of smaller, less prosperous and less stable firms. Where the two sectors relate, the relationship is asymmetrical because some firms on the periphery may depend on large corporationsfor business, whereas the latter do not depend on the former. See: Centre/Periphery; Dependency, Dual Labour Markets; Internal Colonialism. Bibl. Averitt (1968) Dual Labour Markets. Economists now believe that national labour markets comprise interrelated yet non-competing submarkets. Dual labour market models suggest that there are primary and secondary markets. Primary markets are composed of jobs which offer high wages, career structures (albeit with low ceilings for manual employees), the chance to acquire skills on the job, and stable and secure employment. Internal labour markets are often held to be characteristic of primary employment. In these, firms recruit from outside for certain fairly low positions and then fill higher-level vacancies by the promotion of existing employees. Secondary labour market jobs provide low wages, few possibilities for advancement or the acquisition of skills, and unstable, insecure employment. To some extent the primary/secondary labour market division corresponds to the divisions within the dual economy (q.v.): 'core' firms tend to offer primary jobs and peripheral firms 128

Dual Labour Markets

to offer secondary ones. The overlap is not complete because 'core' firms may also offer secondary jobs. In the United States, where the dual labour market is highly developed and well documented, certain groups of workers tend to get jobs in one market rather than another: ethnic minorities and women are more likely to be selected for secondary jobs; white males for primary ones. Institutional economists such as P. B. Doeringer and M. J. Piore (1971) attribute duality mainly to technological factors: advanced technology is believed to require firm-specific skills and stable labour forces, which in turn lead firms to offer training and to commit workers to their jobs by means of high pay, a career structure and good benefits. Because technological demands are not constant for all jobs within a firm, companies frequently work with a mix of primary and secondary markets. Women and minorities are stereotyped as making insufficiently reliable and stable employees,which is why they are discriminated against and excluded from the better jobs. Job changing and absenteeism have tended on average to be higher among these groups, hence employers' stereotypes.But it may be the case that an apparent lack of job commitment follows from the inferior jobs on offer in the secondary market rather than the characteristics of employees. Equally, the labour-force attachment of women now seems to be changing, since women work for more of their lifetime than in the past and, when they are working, do not appear to change jobs any more often than men. Oligopolistic product markets are needed if firms are to pass on the extra costs of creating a privileged stratum. Radicals such as M. Reich et al. (1973), who prefer segmented to 'dual' because there are more than just two sub-markets, suggest that segmentation is a managerial strategy of divide-and-rule. Because 'monopoly' capitalism in the twentieth century created larger enterprises,standardized production methods and de-skilled craftwork, the working class began to grow more homogeneous and potentially more able to organize collectively against capital. Management has therefore created artificial divisions and bought off a large segment of labour in order to prevent organized class struggle. Neither account of segmentation gives much weight to trade unionism, yet experience in America and elsewhere is that unions and professional associations also help to develop and maintain segmentation, insisting 129

Durkhelm, Emile

that companies adopt employment practices that are beneficial to their members and protecting their members against competition from new arrivals on the labour market. Institutional and radical economists distinguish between upper and lower parts of the primarymarket. The lower comprises manual and lower white-collar employees who lack transferable skills and are therefore dependent on their employers. The upper section comprises managers, professionalsand certain craftsmen with transferable skills, who are not tied to a single employer and move among firms seeking the best deal. Sociologists now take account of segmentation in the analysis of internal stratification within the working class, the study of the position of women and ethnic minorities in employment, and accounts of work and industrial relations. There is evidence that market segmentation is fairly universal, so that men and women, for example, tend to be employed in different sectors. Outside the USA and Japan, however, there is less evidence of the prevalence of some of the features of primary markets that are postulated by economists, namely internal labour markets, career ladders, and skill acquisition. Segmentation models differ from the labour process approach (q.v.) which claims that labour has been homogenized. See: Career, De-skilling; Human Capital; Labour Aristocracy; Sexual Divisions; Stereotypes; Underclass; Women and Work; Working Class. Bibl. Edwards (1979); Amsden (ed.) (1980); Berg (ed.) (1981); Gordon et al. (1982)

Durkheim, Emile (1858-1917). He is widely acknowledged as a 'founding father' of modem sociology who helped to define the subject matter and establish the autonomy of sociology as a discipline.He taught first at the University of Bordeaux and then at the Sorbonne in Paris. He was greatly influenced by the French intellectual tradition of J.-J. Rousseau, C. H. Saint-Simon (q.v.) and A. Comte (q.v.). His work is marked by an opposition to the utilitarian tradition in British social thought, which explained social phenomena by referenceto the actions and motives of individuals. He adopted a collectivist perspective throughout his sociological analysis. He denied that the utilitarian version of individualism could provide 130

Ourkheim, Emile

the basis on which to build a stable society. He also asserted that the sociological method was to deal with social facts (q.v.). In his first major work. The Division of Labour in Society (1893), he argued against the British writer H. Spencer that social order in industrial societies could not adequately be explained as an outcome of contractual agreements between individuals motivated by self-interest, because the pursuit of self-interest would lead to social instability, as manifest in various forms of social deviance such as suicide. He distinguished the forms of social order found in primitive and modern societies. Mechanical solidarity in primitive societies was based on the common beliefs and consensus found in the conscience collective (q.v.). As societies industrialized and urbanized and became more complex, the increasing division of labour destroyedmechanical solidarity and moral integration, thus rendering social order problematic. He was well aware at the time he was writing that industrial societies exhibited many conflicts and that force was an important factor in preventing social disruption. He believed, however, that a new form of order would arise in advanced societies on the basis of organic solidarity. This would comprise the interdependence of economic ties arising out of differentiation and specialization within the modern economy, a new network of occupational associations such as guilds that would link individuals to the state, and the emergence within these associations of collectivelycreated moral restraints on egoism. T. Parsons (1937; i968a) interpreted organic solidarity as the continuation of the conscience collective in a modified form, suggesting that Durkheim's analysis of social order in modem society demanded a prior consensus and moral order, and this view has proved influential. Evidence for this interpretation can be drawn from a variety of Durkheim's publications.For example, in two pamphlets written during the First World War Durkheim noted that the communal experience of warfare had created a moral consensus in France and involvement in public ceremonies which resembled religious festivals. In his sociologyof religion, Durkheim also argued that modem society would require some form of conscience collective relevant to contemporary circumstances — an argument clearly dependent on Saint-Simon's conception of the New Christianity. However, it is difficult to reconcile this view of the continuing importance of religious values 131

Durkheim, Emile

in modern societies, which Durkheim appears to have accepted towards the end of his life, with the argument of The Division of Labour in Society which recognized the importance of economic reciprocity (q.v.) in creating social consensus. There has been considerablecontroversy over the continuity of the theme of moral consensus in Durkheim's sociology. Parsons (1937) argued that the early emphasis on social facts in a positivistic framework collapsed as Durkheim adopted a voluntaristic action framework. An alternativeview suggests that the central theme of Durkheim's sociology was the idea of moral compulsion and normative constraint. The changes in Durkheim's epistemology did not produce significant discontinuities in his sociology of moral life. He saw the domain of sociology as the study of social facts and not individuals. He believed both that societies had their own realities which could not simply be reduced to the actions and motives of individuals, and that individuals were moulded and constrained by their social environments. In 1895 he wrote The Rules of Sociological Method, in which he demonstrated that law was a social fact, embodied in formal, codified rules and not dependent on individuals or on any particular act of law enforcement for its existence. In Suicide (1897), he explained how even apparently individual decisions to commit suicide could be understood as being affected by the different forms of social solidarity in different social settings. He identified four types of suicide (q.v.) on the basis of his analysis of the suicide statistics of different societies and different groups within them. 'Egotistic' and 'anomic' forms of suicide were most commonly found in modem societies where, as The Division of Labour in Society had previously shown, traditional forms of social regulation and integration like the conscience collective of mechanical solidarity had declined. The higher incidence of 'egotistic' suicides among modem Protestants than Catholics reflected an individualistic ethos in which individuals were responsible for their own salvation. 'Anomic' suicides occurred when the individual experienced a state of normlessness or when norms conflicted. Both forms were to be found when the social checks on individual behaviour typical of traditional societies had lost their force. In primitive societies and in armies in modem societies, where mechanical solidarity was 132

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stronger, 'altruistic' suicides for the good of the group were more common. Fatalistic suicides, for example among slaves, were the result of excessive social regulation. Although there have been major criticisms of his approach (Atkinson, 1978), Durkheim's Suicide represents the most influential sociological contribution to this issue. He came to see social norms as regulating people's behaviour by means of institutionalized values which the individual internalized, rather than society simply acting as an external constraint. In 1912, in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, he suggested that primitive religions embodied the idea of society and that sacred objects were so because they symbolized the community. Religious culture consisted of the collective values which comprised a society's unity and personality. Religious ceremonies served to reinforce collective values and reaffirm community among individuals. This process was clearly identifiable in primitive societies, though Durkheim recognized how difficult it was to find similar sacred objects and collective rituals in modern organic societies. His approach to the sacred/profane dichotomy represents a major alternative to arguments about secularization (q.v.). Durkheim was concerned to understand the universal functions of religious systems for the continuity of society as such. In Primitive Classification (1903), written with M. Mauss, he argued that the fundamental categories of human thought, such as number, time and space, were modelled upon features of social organization. In his political writings he expressed concern at the dangers to society of individuals who do not feel that social norms are meaningfulto them, who are in a state of anomie (q.v.). He saw the attraction of socialism to the working class as a protest against the disintegration of traditional social bonds and values, rather than as a desire for the abolition of private property per se. He advocated guild socialism as a means of rebuilding cohesive and solidary social communities. See: Differentiation; Division of Labour, Guild; Norm; Official Statistics; Religion; Sacred; Social Order, Social Pathology; Suicide. Bibl. Lukes (1972); Giddens (1978)

Dysfunction. A social activity or institution has dysfunctions when i33

Dysfunction

some of its consequences impede the workings of another social activity or institution. Any particular activity may have dysfunctions for one other activity and eufunctions (helpful functions) for another or, indeed, a mixture of dysfunctions and eufunctions for the same activity. See: Functionalism.

Ecological Fallacy. This is the fallacy of drawing conclusions about individual people from data that refer only to aggregates. For example, sociologists often conduct their studies by comparing the social characteristics of collectivities. The relationship between voting and social class might be studied by comparing a geographical area with a high proportion of, say, manual workers with one containing a high proportion of professional managerial workers, and seeing how many votes each political party receives in each area. This is a permissible technique, because some evidence of a connection between the social class composition of an area and voting behaviour can be established. However, such a study would commit the ecological fallacy if it led to imputations about individual voting behaviour on the basis of data that derived from collections of individuals. Ecology. See: Suicide; Urban Ecology. Economic Determinism or Economic Reductionism. See: Determinism; Economism; Reductionism.

Economic Sociology. The study of the relations between the economic and non-economic aspects of social life was central to the interests of most sociologists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The intellectual dominance of functionalism (q.v.) and cultural sociology in the mid twentieth century led to a declining interest in economic activities, which continued until the 1970S when sociologists rediscovered in M. Weber and K. Marx the central place of the economy in the understanding of society. Economic sociology is a generic title covering various theoretical traditions and areas of substantive interest, neither a distinct 'school' nor a narrowly limited area.

Economism. This term has two distinct meanings in Marxist i35

Education, Sociology of sociology, both pejorative, (i) Economism in the sense of economic reductionism explains all social, political and cultural activity in terms of the economic base, which denies the 'superstructure' any independent significance. A related meaning is that the key to the subordination of one class by another is found in the organization of production. (2) A variant meaning widely used in industrial sociologydescribes the class consciousness (q.v.) and aspirations of the working class as economistic, when workers' activities are geared to improving their material conditions within capitalism rather than to its overthrow. This variant is similar to the use of 'trade-union consciousness' by V. I. Lenin (1902). See: Base and Superstructure; Determinism; Leninism; Marxist Sociology; Reductionism; Trade Unions. Education, Sociology of. See: Sociology of Education. Educational Attainment. Despite formal equality of opportunity and access to education, levels of educational attainment vary systematicallywithin "Western societies. Children from lower social class families do less well than those from higher, and girls do less well than boys. Because of the linkage between educational qualifications and occupations, sociologists concerned with social mobility (q.v.) and class (q.v.) have been especially interested to explain class variations in attainment. British educational sociologists in the 1950s and i96os identified a number of factors affecting social class differences in attainment, (i) The organization of schooling, with selection on the basis of a competitive examination (the 11 +) for different types of public secondary school and the streaming of children within schools, was one factor. The spread of comprehensive schools since the late i96os has largely ended selection in public education, while the point at which streaming takes place has been raised in many schools. Comprehensive education has not existed for long enough to ascertainits effect on attainment. But the continuation of private selective schools (accounting for 8-2 per cent of British schoolchildren in 1980) and streaming may perpetuate class differences. The experience of countries with longer comprehensive traditions, with less emphasison streaming and with relatively smaller private sectors, such as the USA, suggests that systematic differences in attainment may survive changes in the overall organization of the school system. i36

Educational Attainment

Research in Britain by M. Rutter et al. (1979) indicates that even within one type of school (comprehensive), differences in the internalorganization of individual schools will lead to different levels of achievement in public examinations. (2) Teachers' expectations were thought to be influential, since teachers appeared to expect higher levels of achievement from middle-class pupils than working-class ones, and pupils responded to these different expectations. Moreover,middle-class children shared the same culture as middle-class teachers. (3) Working-class culture was thought to be one of cultural deprivation (q.v.), marked by low aspirations for educationalattainment in family and community, and embodying a restricted code (q.v.). The second and third factors emphasized cultural phenomena as important sources of difference, and this emphasis has been continued in more recent treatments of classroom interaction (q.v.), classroom knowledge (q.v.) and cultural reproduction(q.v.). Gender differences have recently attracted the attention of sociologists,though they are less well researched .than class differentials. In Britain, girls do better than boys until adolescence and gain more passes at Ordinary level and C S E. But they do less well at Advanced level and are less likely to attend university. They are also less likely than boys to study mathematics, sciences or engineering. These inequalities, however, are declining. Attainment differences have often been explained by the sexual division of labour outside school. In a society where a woman's primary role is domestic, as housewife and mother, and where women's work is inferior to men's and takes second place to domestic commitments, girls are socialized with different expectations from boys'. Schools may reinforce these expectations via the hidden curriculum (q.v.). S. Sharpe (1979) has suggested that teachers will treat boys and girls differently, acting on the stereotype that girls should be submissive and passive, and that their primary adult roles will be domestic. In addition, girls are expected to study 'feminine' subjects, which do not include mathematics,physics or engineering. In coeducational schools, boys reinforce these stereotypes so that girls experience pressure to conformfrom teachers and peers alike. The slow reduction in attainmentdifferentials suggests, however, that sociologists have not yet fully explained gender differences. See: Bernstein; Equality; Intellii37

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