Social Order - Attainment of Social Order

Attainment of Social Order

There are currently two different theories that explain and attempt to account for social order. The first theory is "order results from a large number of independent decisions to transfer individual rights and liberties to a coercive state in return for its guarantee of security for persons and their property, as well as its establishment of mechanisms to resolve disputes." as stated in Theories of Social Order by Hechter and Horne. The next theory is that "the ultimate source of social order as residing not in external controls but in a concordance of specific values and norms that individuals somehow have managed to internalize." also stated in Theories of Social Order by Hechter and Horne. Both the arguments for how social order is attained are very different. One argues that it is achieved through outside influence and control and the other argues that it can only be attained when the individual willingly follows norms and values that they have grown accustomed to and internalised. Weber's insistence on the importance of domination and symbolic systems in social life was retained by Pierre Bourdieu, who developed the idea of social orders, ultimately transforming it into a theory of fields.

Read more about this topic:  Social Order

Famous quotes containing the words social order, attainment of, attainment, social and/or order:

    I’m tired of earning my own living, paying my own bills, raising my own child. I’m tired of the sound of my own voice crying out in the wilderness, raving on about equality and justice and a new social order.... Self-sufficiency is exhausting. Autonomy is lonely. It’s so hard to be a feminist if you are a woman.
    Jane O’Reilly, U.S. feminist and humorist. The Girl I Left Behind, ch. 7 (1980)

    That which is required in order to the attainment of accurate conclusions respecting the essence of the Beautiful is nothing more than earnest, loving, and unselfish attention to our impressions of it.
    John Ruskin (1819–1900)

    Religion means goal and way, politics implies end and means. The political end is recognizable by the fact that it may be attained—in success—and its attainment is historically recorded. The religious goal remains, even in man’s highest experiences, that which simply provides direction on the mortal way; it never enters into historical consummation.
    Martin Buber (1878–1965)

    Could it not be that just at the moment masculinity has brought us to the brink of nuclear destruction or ecological suicide, women are beginning to rise in response to the Mother’s call to save her planet and create instead the next stage of evolution? Can our revolution mean anything else than the reversion of social and economic control to Her representatives among Womankind, and the resumption of Her worship on the face of the Earth? Do we dare demand less?
    Jane Alpert (b. 1947)

    It does not follow, because our difficulties are stupendous, because there are some souls timorous enough to doubt the validity and effectiveness of our ideals and our system, that we must turn to a state controlled or state directed social or economic system in order to cure our troubles.
    Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)