When I was a student in the 1980s and 1990s, it was conventional to characterise the social sciences, especially sociology, anthropology and political science, as divided into two wings, those emphasising ‘consensus’ and those emphasising ‘conflict’. This framing goes back to the 1960s, and was well established as I was becoming an academic. The prime example of the consensus approach was the functionalism of figures such as Talcott Parsons and A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, a view that emphasised how society was formed through shared beliefs, values, and symbols, which were seen as having beneficial powers of social integration. Conflict approaches were associated strands of theorising that were critical of patterns of social domination, as in Marxism’s critique of the capitalist class system, or feminism’s critique of patriarchal social structures. Functionalism has largely fallen by the wayside, and most current social science is more informed by conflict theories.
However, there are important differences within the broad paradigm of conflict approaches. Of the great triumvirate of Durkheim, Marx and Weber, it was Durkheim who was the lodestar of functionalism, with his deep concern for what would reintegrate modern society, with its complex division of labour and tendencies towards anomie. Marx was the champion of conflict approaches, by placing class conflict at the centre of his model of historical process. Weber was always received more ambiguously. On the one hand, Parsons had been a key early translator of Weber from German for English speaking audiences, and he tended to emphasise Weber’s concerns with the role of values in social development, assimilating him somewhat to Durkheim. But many Weber specialists understood that multiple forms of social conflict over economic, political and cultural power were central to his theory. For many he was very much a conflict theorist.
So, if Marx and Weber were the two icons of conflict theory, wherein lies the difference between them? The key difference is that for Marx, while conflict was a central driver of his theory, conflict itself is regarded as an unnatural phenomenon that will be transcended in the fullness of time, after the establishment of universal communism. Conflict was somehow a key explanatory variable, and also external to human nature. For Weber, conflict was a standing condition of human social relations, exacerbated in some circumstances, and moderated in others. Interests and values naturally come into conflict, and various social institutions serve to deal with conflict, but there is no ultimate escape, just better and worse ways of moderating conflict. Marx’s conflict was ultimately resolvable, Weber’s ultimately unresolvable. Although Marx is often seen as the ultimate conflict theorist, by this distinction we might regard Weber as the more thoroughgoing conflict theorist.
This has implications for how we understand social science as a critical practice that engages with and tries to ‘improve’ society. In the Marxian tradition, critique aims toward the ultimate transformation of society and resolution of conflict, whereas in the Weberian tradition criticism is necessarily more piecemeal, and there are deep reservations about academics taking on the role of prophets for the wider society, rather than that of more detached observers. Many current schools of thought have tended to reproduce the Marxian attitude of total critique of society, although not the actual sociohistorical analysis of Marx. Much of this has been folded into an omnibus social critique that combines capitalist exploitation with racism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and colonialism, in a synthesis that seems pervasive in its oppressiveness, and without any deeper logic of social transformation as found in Marx. It is unclear whether conflict is seen as resolvable, heading towards some ultimate resolution (‘on the side of history’), or ultimately unresolvable.
In much of this work, the attitude of critique is much more highly developed than the analysis of the systems and structures being critiqued. The question is ‘how do we reveal the negative nature of the current state of affairs, and how do we change it?’ The more basic questions, such as ‘how does society work?’, and ‘how did things get this way?’ are more often neglected. The latter take us back, at least to a degree, to a more functionalist perspective. Behind the opposition of conflict and consensus, there is a deeper question about the sources of social order, and the sources of social change, regardless of whether we prefer the preservation of a given order, or the promotion of a given change. Much current social theory is so enchanted by the siren song of change that it neglects to ask the equally important question about the sources and possibilities of social order. To quote from the film The Wild Ones, ‘What are you rebelling against?… What have you got?’.
These questions of consensus and conflict, order and change, are mutually implicated, and cannot be thought through separately. Consensus and conflict exist in counterpoise, as responses to each other, not as alternatives. After any momentous social change, there will follow a new social order, which needs to be understood, and justified, as such. If that new order is unimaginable in current terms, what confidence can we have that it will be an improvement? In fact, any social order of the future, no matter how different, will be built out of those in the past, and will preserve many of their features, and yet, no social order can prevent the inevitable march of social change. This is why we need to rebalance our attention to these twinned processes, and not allow the spirit of idealistic critique to overwhelm our curiosity about the world as it is, and how social order in general is achieved. Both will play a part in what follows, and much will need preserving, as well as changing, in a world we can only approximately grasp.
Uneasy Essays 