Sociology, as the science of forms of association, was consolidated with its research programs, with the contributions of Simmel and Wiese, particularly with the study of the various configurations or forms, better known under the name of social structures (mass, group and abstract collectivity), at the beginning of the twentieth century. The purpose remains, today, to create a doctrine that results from the empirical analysis of the forms of socialization, including the study of the action human, in situations specific, as conditioning factors of social processes, understood as movements of joining and separating. This involves a root cause analysis (RCA) of these movements that allows for the evaluation and classification of social processes.
Social structures are the result of social processes. Another basic concept is that of distance, in its many gradations. Managing these distances between people and groups of people is a palpable benefit of the proposed research program, because it allows us to consider institutions (e.g., the state, the economy, etc.) as social structures. To illustrate: when we study the state we focus our attention solely on “the various ways in which men and groups of men within these structures are connected to one another or separated from one another… in the ways in which they are connected to one another or separated from one another… [grandes] structures the tendency is towards a longer duration than that which characterizes simple relationships” (Wiese, 1941: 69).
The state is an example of an abstract collectivity. Rather than representing the simple accumulation of social processes, it is the combination of less complex structures, which in turn result from social processes. The other types of social structures (i.e. masses and groups) are differentiated from abstract collectivities according to the distances between these structures and individuals. Masses are divided into concrete (crowds) and abstract (latent crowds) according to their duration, but they are generally disorganized and there is a great influence of individual affective relations on action (e.g. in a protest).
Based on the doctrine of social relations and forms We identify and analyze, with the support of the SAI Social Technologythe social processes that underlie each type of form of socialization. By breaking down these processes at the level of social interactions, it is possible to interpret social reality, incorporating cultural aspects. We are not dedicated to “finding the rules according to which someone is considered a member of a group and groups relate to each other” (Simmel in Frisby, 2014: 114). In reality, we privilege “simply a new point of view for the observation of already known facts” (Ibid.: 113).
Since we have taken the State as an example of an abstract collectivity, we will use Civil Society (CS) as a model of an abstract mass or latent multitude. The CS only manifests itself as a multitude or concrete mass in very particular situations, from time to time. The social processes that involve this CS can be studied in detail with the help of sociological method that we are proposing. Furthermore, “developing the sociological aspects of economics, jurisprudence, ethics, religion, philology, geography, etc., is of great importance” (Coser, 1965: 57). It represents a whole medium-term research program.
References:
Coser, LA (1965). George Simmel.
Frisby, D. (2014). George Simmel. Second edition in Spanish.
Wiese, L. v. (1941). Sociology. Edited and annotated by: Franz H. Mueller.
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To download the most up-to-date version of the entire book (including all columns published to date), please click on the following link: Social Capital, Jose Maria Rodriguez, PhD. Also, for an introduction to the topic, we recommend watching the video SOCIAL CAPITAL: https://youtu.be/gRXjjZkCrzo
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2024-07-22 23:23:42
