EXCHANGE THEORY
Read: Appelrouth & Edles 454-473
Professor at the University of Chicago then Columbia University. President of American Sociological Association 1973. Senior Fellow at Kings College, Fellow of the National Academy of Science, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was also Pitt Professor at Cambridge University and Distinguished Honorary Professor at the Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences in China. Died in March 2002 of adult respiratory distress syndrome.
Blau was interested in building a theoretical bridge that would link sociological studies of everyday interactions between individuals and those that examined the collectivist or structural dimensions of society, such as economic systems, political institutions, or belief systems.
exchange theory - is a social psychological and sociological perspective that explains social change and stability as a process of negotiated exchanges between parties. Social exchange theory posits that all human relationships are formed by the use of a subjective cost-benefit analysis and the comparison of alternatives. The theory has roots in economics, psychology and sociology.
Blau stressed the significance of rewards in inducing others to acceded to ones wishes. For Blau, then, an individual is able to exercise power over others when he alone is able to supply needed rewards to them. If the others are unable to receive the benefits from another source, and if they are unable to offer rewards to the individual, they become dependent on the individual. Their only option is to submit to his demands lest he withdraw the needed benefits. In short, power results from an unequal exchange stemming from an individuals or groups monopoly over a desired resource (456).
In defining power in terms of an inequality of resources and the submission that an imbalanced exchange imposes, Blau is led to consider the processes that shape the exercise of power and the rise of opposition to it. These processes, in turn, account for both stability and change in interpersonal and group relations, as well as in more complex social institutions. Of central importance is the role of social norms of fairness and the legitimacy they either confer on or deny those in dominant positions (456).
extrinsic rewards – are “detachable” from the association in which they are acquired. In other words, extrinsic benefits are derived not from another’s company itself, but from the external rewards his company will provide. Here, associating with others serves as a means to a further end. Thus, a salesperson is considerate because she wants to make a commission, not because she values the relationship she initiates with any particular customer (461).
intrinsic rewards – are those things we find pleasurable in and of themselves, not because they provide the means for obtaining other benefits. Examples of intrinsic rewards are celebrating a holiday with one’s family, going on a walk with a friend, or love—the purest type of intrinsic reward. In cases such as these, rewards express ones commitment to the relationship and are exchanged in the interest of maintaining it (461).
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Edward Said
With the publication of Orientalism (1978), Said was catapulted to international academic fame. The book presented his ideas on Orientalism, the Western study of Eastern cultures. He contended that Orientalist scholarship was and continues to be inextricably tied to the imperialist societies that produced it, making much of the work inherently politicized, servile to power, and therefore suspect. Grounding much of this thesis in his intimate knowledge of colonial literature such as the fiction Conrad, and in the post-structuralist theory of Foucault, Derrida and others, Said's Orientalism (1978) and other works proved pioneering in literary theory and criticism, and continue to influence that and several other fields in the humanities. Orientalism affected Middle Eastern studies in particular, transforming the way practitioners of the discipline describe and examine the Middle East. Said came to discuss and vigorously debate the issue of Orientalism with scholars in the fields of history and area studies, many of whom disagreed with his thesis, including most famously Bernard Lewis.
Immanuel Wallerstein
Wallerstein began as an expert of post-colonial African affairs, which he selected as the focus of his studies after an international youth conference in 1951, and which his publications were almost exclusively devoted to until the early 1970s, when he began to distinguish himself as a historian and theorist of the global capitalist economy on a macroscopic level. His early criticism of global capitalism and championship of "anti-systemic movements" have recently made him a gray eminence with the anti-globalization movement within and without the academic community, along with Noam Chomsky and Pierre Bourdieu.
Anthony Giddens
Giddens, the author of over 34 books and 200 articles, essays and reviews has contributed and written about most notable developments in the area of social sciences, with the exception of research design and methods. He has written commentaries on most leading schools and figures and has used most sociological paradigms in both micro and macrosociology. His writings range from abstract, metatheoretical problems to very direct and 'down-to-earth' textbooks for students. Finally, he is also known for his interdisciplinary approach: he has commented not only on the developments in sociology, but also in anthropology, archaeology, psychology, philosophy, history, linguistics, economics, social work and most recently, political science. In view of his knowledge and works, one may view much of his life's work as a form of 'grand synthesis' of sociological theory.
Pierre Bourdieu
Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, and symbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location, and symbolic violence to reveal the dynamics of power relations in social life. His work emphasized the role of practice and embodiment or forms in social dynamics and worldview construction, often in opposition to universalized Western philosophical traditions. He built upon the theories of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Georges Canguilhem, Karl Marx, Gaston Bachelard, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Erwin Panofsky, and Marcel Mauss. A notable influence on Bourdieu was Blaise Pascal, after whom Bourdieu titled his Pascalian Meditations.
Michel Foucault
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Jean Baudrillard
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Dorothy Smith
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Patricia Hill Collins
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C. Wright Mills
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Jurgen Habermas
Habermas's works resonate within the traditions of Kant and the Enlightenment and of democratic socialism through his emphasis on the potential for transforming the world and arriving at a more humane, just, and egalitarian society through the realization of the human potential for reason, in part through discourse ethics. While Habermas has stated that the Enlightenment is an "unfinished project," he argues it should be corrected and complemented, not discarded. In this he distances himself from the Frankfurt School, criticizing it, as well as much of postmodernist thought, for excessive pessimism, misdirected radicalism and exaggerations.
Peter Berger
Berger was a fervent student of religion. He continuously contemplated his own Christian beliefs and spent a “very happy” year at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, where he studied to be a minister. Indeed, Berger is just as well known for his work in the sociology of religion as in phenomenology and the sociology of knowledge. His now-classic Invitation to Sociology (1963) continues to be one of the most acclaimed and inspiring introductions to the discipline of sociology today.
Thomas Luckman
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Peter Blau
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Erving Goffman
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Robert K. Merton
Theories include - deviance, drug addiction, friendship formation, medical education, technology, media, and the history of science.