Marx and Mead (RLE Social Theory) by Tom W. Goff

Author:Tom W. Goff [Goff, Tom W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781317651536
Google: QzNHBAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-08-13T05:00:32+00:00

chapter 4

Marx and Mead: towards a critical sociology of knowledge

Of the two hypotheses guiding this study, the first has been established: both Marx and Mead clearly ‘anticipate’ the critique of the sociology of knowledge in terms at least of specific and central aspects of their work. Both writers develop basic presuppositions and concepts that are consistent with and detailed elaborations of the insight that social factors and ideas are integrally and reciprocally related. Furthermore, both perspectives propose the necessity of a critical mode of analysis; explicitly in the case of Marx, largely implicitly in the case of Mead.

At the same time, the analyses demonstrated particular inadequacies in both perspectives such that neither alone may be said to be fully adequate as a response to the critique. Mead’s social theory of man and thought contains virtually no explicit appreciation of any problematic that would call forth or justify a sociology of knowledge of either critical or positivistic character. Though Marx introduces the necessary conceptualization of such a problematic, he fails to provide a theoretical basis for the process of alienation that is consistent with his fundamental and essential concept of human life as praxis.

The second hypothesis concerns these remaining inadequacies for it argues that the resolution of difficulties in the discipline lies not in either perspective alone, but in a synthesis of relevant ideas taken from both writers. If one rewords this hypothesis in terms of the analysis to this point, it is to suggest that the perspectives of Marx and Mead are fundamentally compatible and that the inadequacies of the one can be corrected or completed through specific emphases or developments found in the other.1 The first task is therefore to delineate more explicitly the consistency that exists between the basic elements of the perspectives of these theorists. The second is to determine the degree to which their specific emphases are complementary in relation to the development of a fully adequate, critical sociology of knowledge.

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