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Sociology.Welcome

Notes by Andrius Kulikauskas on "Social Theory: A Basic Tool Kit" by John Parker with Leonard Mars, Paul Ransome and Hilary Stanworth.

I am trying to understand, in my own way, the five explanatory concepts discussed in the book as well as a sixth concept of Vision.

• 01 Action (Longitudinal yields evolution)
• 02 Vision (Comparative yields atlas)
• 12 Individual (Archive yields handbook)
• 23 Nature (Census yields chronicle)
• 13 Culture (Surveys yield catalogue)
• 03 Social Structure (Social network yields odyssey)

Here the numbers mean

• 0: Individual Actor
• 1: Documented Individual
• 2: Classified Individual
• 3: Intersection of Subgroups

The book tests these concepts by considering cases where they seem to be most relevant but then also show that even in such cases they are not sufficient.

Consider harsh, extreme environments and the significance of technology. Consider technological development and adoption. Suggests that history is a story of progress from primitive to modern as people learn to deal with nature.

• Is the technology that people use entirely dictated by the nature of the environment?
• Do they respond to the environment only with technological rationality?
• Do different peoples in the same environment have the same technology? What affects their technological choices?
• Do people with more advanced technology cope better?
• Why do people take up technologies or not?

Case study: Comparing technological choices of the Achuar tribe and the Huaorani tribe in the upper Amazon forests.

• Both tribes have similar technological choices available which are similarly effective.
• But the Huaorani tribe made specific choices (using the blowpipe to hunt woolly monkeys, the spear to hunt peccaries) that fit symbolically with their social logic of avoiding outsiders and respecting a proper social distance amongst each other to avoid incest.
• Laura Rival figured this out by studying the Culture by making a table of factors, distinguishing the choices, looking for parallels.
• When they found sympathetic outsiders - Christian missionaries - then their worldview changed, their living circumstances changed (they took up farming) and their symbolic logic changed (they did not necessarily marry cousins, they did not identify with monkeys).