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THEORETICAL ANTINOMIES.
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Examines sociological work of Durkheim, Marx and Barthes.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Examines sociological work of Durkheim, Marx and Barthes. How each sociologist treated the unresolvable contradictions embedded into accounts of social struture, form and change. Impact on American interactionist and French structuralist social theory. Social theory andconflict, alienation and paradox. Theories of social interactions and social reality.

Paper Introduction:
This research examines the sociological work of Durkheim, Marx, and Barthes, with reference to their treatment of theoretical antinomies, or unresolvable contradictions embedded into accounts of social structure, form, and change, and their impact on American interactionist and French structuralist social theory. The research will set forth the context of the emergence of modern social theory and then discuss how the work of Marx, Durkheim, and Barthes offers a way of analyzing the relative situations of individuals, groups, and societies as a whole. It does not take much examination of the history of social theory to see that varieties of conflict, alienation, and paradox appear inherent in the relationships between individual and individual, between individual and group, between individual and/or group and society at large. Endless varieties of dyadic, inter

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Annette Lavers. This view of division of labor is that the more specialized andpersonal an individual activity is, the more vital the social experience(328). This is the negative side of the antagonism, disturbance within itself, private property abolished and in the process of abolishing itself (Marx, "Alienation" 33-4).Alienation, says Marx, tends to produce conditions (and justification) forrevolution, which will resolve social contradictions, reconfigure society,and eliminate the problem--private property--and establish dictatorship ofthe proletariat (i.e., of labor not capital). Durkheim describes society as the sum total or integration ofvarious forces interacting within it, though the sum may be either"mechanical" or "organic." Mechanical solidarity follows from the relianceof persons on the stability and integrity of their society, marked by thesocial similarities and psychological affinities (Durkheim 6 -62). . [and] seek in our friends those qualities we lack"(Durkheim 17). But diversity also implies social conflict, since too muchspecialization may infringe on mechanical solidarity, or collectivesentiment (Durkheim 298). Yet the impulse to make sense of what eludesunderstanding persists because the individual is a social being, subject togreat external influences yet also an actor in those influences. It isrelated to the "collective consciousness" (43 et passim). . This research examines the sociological work of Durkheim, Marx, andBarthes, with reference to their treatment of theoretical antinomies, orunresolvable contradictions embedded into accounts of social structure,form, and change, and their impact on American interactionist and Frenchstructuralist social theory. "Wage Labour and Capital." The Marx-Engels Reader. The implicationfor individuals overwhelmed by that social context is what Durkheim termsanomie, expressed by reference to dysfunctional elements "which tend tobecome institutionalised or resolved" (233). Whereas Marx sees division of labor as the reason for alienation andrevolution, Durkheim sees division of labor as a source of socialsolidarity. Trans. Ed. Norton & Company, 1978. 1957; New York: Hill and Wang, 2 .Durkheim, Emile. In hisdiscussion of a photography exhibition titled The Family of Man, whichportrays the physical diversity of mankind while asserting "the existenceof a common mould" (1 ), he takes the implicit contradiction to be theassertion of a comfortably pious notion that humankind has a single humanessence that owes everything to divine power--when the hard truth of thehistory of human behavior is that relationships between individuals andgroups are by no means "essentialist." Barthes cites race-murders, wars,the highly variable conditions in industrialized and colonized nations,hence pointing to the absurdity of declaring mankind what Durkheim wouldterm a collective consciousness. Ed. This is the positive side of the antagonism, private property satisfied with itself. New York: The Free P, 1984.---. Barthes says that contradictions ofbourgeois society are embedded in its appropriation of collective myth toachieve expressions of (bourgeois) social truths. 469-5 .---. Ed. Norton & Company, 1978. 133-35.---. Ed. Barthes takes the view that social realitycannot be once-for-all identified but remain subject to continualrevisiting and revision, available to what the structure reveals in theprocesses of interaction, however attractive may be the notion ofreconciling the whole structure as the sum of its parts. Barthes takes as his project "to live to the full the contradiction ofmy time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth" (12). Trans. Endlessvarieties of dyadic, intergroup, and intrasocietal encounters suggest thatthe reality of social organization and social actors may not easily bereduced to one description. Making sense of social interactions is a key feature of classicalsocial theorists. "The Genesis of the Self and Social Control." Philosophers of Process. The presence of anomie, whichinterrogates the institutionalized collective consciousness, could implysocial transition and transformation at the social level, or resort tocrime or suicide, whether actual or as death of the spirit, on theindividual/group level. Instrumental use of myth by bourgeois culture tends tosuppress or overtake mythic awareness that may be private or psychological,hence creative and imaginative, tending toward interpreting the social orlogical structure of public myth. "Manifesto of the Communist Party." The Marx-Engels Reader. as wealth, is compelled to preserve its own existence and thereby the existence of its opposite, the proletariat. To be sure, thereare deviations from the integrated whole, e.g., crime, the punishment ofwhich entails a collective sentiment for vengeance for something sacredwhich we vaguely feel is more or less outside and above us" (Durkheim 56). Mythologies. The research will set forth the context of theemergence of modern social theory and then discuss how the work of Marx,Durkheim, and Barthes offers a way of analyzing the relative situations ofindividuals, groups, and societies as a whole. Myth is, he says, a"system of communication" (1 9) that has "a type of social usage" (1 9).Bourgeois-society usage of myth functions in the public sphere, containinglogical and socially commonsense objectives that may not be obvious untilanalyzed, or subjected to what Barth calls semioclasm (9), i.e., theidentification and tearing-down of the symbols and meanings of a mythicpresentation. Suicide: A Study in Sociology. Robert C. Inhibiting creativity implicit in organicsolidarity may create an artificial, mechanical stability. Norton & Company, 1978. New York: W.W. Conflicts emerge when labor serves, as it must, interests of property.The manifest content of the connection between capital and labor is thatthere is a division of labor, with the entrepreneur providing a context inwhich laborers can sell their labor to capital. It does not take much examination of the history of social theory tosee that varieties of conflict, alienation, and paradox appear inherent inthe relationships between individual and individual, between individual andgroup, between individual and/or group and society at large. It plainly implies latent social discontent in thecontext of apparent social solidarity. Tucker. Works CitedBarthes, Roland. Labor is simply an instrument of production.This structure of society sets up a permanent contradiction because laborcannot escape capital and form an alternative social environment eventhough it might desire to do just that. In this context there are "special functions" ofindividuals, unregulated by collective consciousness, that foster social"cohesion" and "solidarity" by their very diversity (85), much in themanner of higher-animal organisms comprising many cells and one body. As Mead,associated with symbolic interactionism, states: "The life-process takesplace in individual organisms, so that the psychology which studies thatprocess in its creative determining function becomes a science of theobjective world" (Mead 278). Tucker. But it only appears thatworkers sell anything (Marx, "Wage" 2 4); the latent content of theconnection is that control of it resides in the entrepreneur: Private property . New York: W.W. New York: W.W. Capital is power because itcontrols means of production. Organic solidarity occurs because of interrelationship of individualswithin that society owing to division of labor, or mutual reliance forsocial coherence: "However richly endowed we may be, we always lacksomething . Douglas Browning. Robert C. Halls. W.D. Barthes uses the term myth chiefly to designate expressions ofbourgeois (i.e., politically retrograde) norms; the political left, hesuggests, is too intellectually disorganized to come up with unitary mythicconsciousness except in the from of ideology (147-8). Robert C. New York: Free P, 1997.Marx, Karl. . New York: Random House, 277-92. . 2 3-18.Mead, George Herbert. The proletariat, on the other hand, is compelled to abolish itself and thereby its conditioning opposite--private property--which makes it a proletariat. But Barthes argues that contradiction is embedded intobourgeois mechanisms of social control, whether in the arts, politics, orsocial sciences, because bourgeois norms, or the collective consciousness,ipso facto set up a condition of alienation because they contradict thepotentialities of expressions of individual consciousness and creativity. The Division of Labor in Society. Barthes's structuralist social critique involves identifying (indeedadvocacy of) latent anomie in any of a variety of expressions of collectiveconsciousness, which he sees as suspect because of the tendency that suchexpressions have to endorse social control and cement bourgeois control ofsocial experience. "Alienation and Social Classes." The Marx-Engels Reader. Marx defines society in terms of "man's reciprocalaction" (Marx, "Society and Economy" 136), which he formulates as powerrelationships between capital and labor. Tucker.

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