1. UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS
Master’s Final
Examination
SOCI 5150 – Contemporary Theory
Jenna Denning
3/13/2015

2. Denning 1
Jenna Denning
Masters Comprehensive Examination
Theory Question Jenna Denning
Dr. Milan Zafirovski
Contemporary Social Structure & Function
Following the rise of the Industrial Revolution, Western society began a dramatic
shift into the modern era, defined by the harnessing of knowledge and science, distinctly
different from that of the pre-industrial period. Characteristic of the modern period was
full employment, job security, and the creation of the welfare state during the twentieth
century, hallmarks which have garnered much notice from contemporary sociological
theorists. Full-time employment and security of employment which individuals of the
modern period enjoyed is increasingly important because recent shifts in labor
structures are defining what scholars and theorists are now defining as the post-
modernism period. Contemporary theorists of this time period such as Pitirim Sorokin,
Robert Merton, Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Bauman, Neil Smelser, Pierre Bourdieu,
Jürgen Habermas, and Ulrich Beck took notice of social structure and function during
the contemporary period, and made certain points on how social structures and
functions have shifted and changed and effected individuals. In this essay, I will look at
these theorists specifically and how they view social structure as Western societies
passed through modernity, to what is seen by many as a period of post-modernity.
These theorists explain first how society structies change and how this affects

3. Denning 2
structures and functions of society on a macro level, and delving even further into how
this affects the individuals of society in the micro level.
Part One: MacroSocialStructure Theory
As Smelser proposes, Sociology as a science has been first and foremost a
macro-level field of scientific study, bringing to mind that society as a whole has “long
been and ultimate point of reference in the organization of social life” (Smelser 1997).
For example, political science uses the nation, state, and national government to base
study. For economics, the macroeconomic unit of study has been the national economy,
and cultural and social anthropologists typically primarily focus their study on “culture,”
stressing commonalities in variables such as “values, language, beliefs and sense of
identity.” (Smelser 1997). Lastly, for Sociology, our corresponding unit of study
historically has been the national society, “the seat of social integration and social
institutions” (Smelser 1997). Earlier contemporary theorists, such as Sorokin and
Merton, use macro-level analysis to discuss social structure, but as Smelser points out
in his book, continuing to focus only on the macro-level in Sociology may lead us to
miss key elements of society; i.e. how social structures affect individuals. We will see
how more recent contemporary theorists begin to take a more micro-level look at
Sociology later in this analysis. Although contemporary theorists are recently noticing
changing social structures affecting individuals on the micro-level, it is important first to
understand how social structures change over time on the macro-level of analysis.

4. Denning 3
Causes and Explanations of Socio-Structural Change
In his 1957 work, Social and Cultural Dynamics, Sorokin posits through multiple
causes and explanations of socio-structural change which have been given as
examples by which societies learn from each other and change. First, he discusses
“externalistic interpretation” of social change, which is a theory based upon the physics
theory of rest and equilibrium. The fundamental understanding behind this theory is of
an understanding of society that is always in a state of rest and equilibrium, “until some
‘external force’ thrusts it out of its place and keeps it moving and changing” (pg. 632).
Without some sort of external stimulus acting upon the society in question, by this
thought process then the society is therefore assumed to be unable to change and will
remain in equilibrium.
The second theory of social change can be seen as exactly the opposite of the
external theory: the “immanent theory” of sociocultural change, whereby “in regard to
any sociocultural system, it claims that it changes by virtue of its own forces and
properties” (Sorokin 633). Again, fully opposite of the external theory, this theory states
a society cannot help changing even if all external factors outside of the society are held
constant. The social change is intrinsic, and built into the system regardless of external
forces acting upon the society.
There is a third theory of socio-structural change proposed by Sorokin, the
“intermediary or integral” theory of change. This theory “attempts to view a change of
any socio-cultural phenomenon as the result of the combined external and internal
forces” (Sorokin 634). Sorokin’s main critique in this theory of change is that oftentimes

5. Denning 4
there is an assumption of equal force coming from both sides of the equation without
any real attempt being made to understand which side plays a more critical role in
causing change.
Upon giving three theories by which societal functions change, Sorokin then
clearly voices his support for the “immanent theory” of sociocultural change. His first
reason for this is simple: we do not know of any social system that does not change “in
the course of its existence or in the course of time” (Sorokin 634). He continues on to
say this fact is incontestable and unquestionable, so to what causes this we must delve
further. By knowing there is no evidence of any known society remaining in equilibrium,
or at rest to say, we can then know change is simply due to the fact that the society
exists. As stated previously, change is built in to the framework of a society’s overall
system, regardless of external forces. Sorokin effectively supports the “immanent
theory” of socio-structural change, stating his evidence is “sufficient in order to make the
principle of immanent change of the sociocultural phenomena valid” (Sorokin 636).
Because a society exists, therefore it is on a path to change simply because of its own
existence regardless of external factors.
Examples and Illustrations of Social Structure Change
More recently than Sorokin, in 2001 Jürgen Habermas discusses macro-level
social structure changes in his book, The Postnational Constellation. He outlines the
long term structural changes in macro-level social processes, building upon Sorokin’s
social change theory by giving actual examples of social structures changing over time

6. Denning 5
during the twentieth century. Habermas’s major social processes of the twentieth
century are characterized by being longer rhythms of social change passing through the
century; specifically, demographic changes and structural changes in the nature of
employment.
Demographically, the twentieth century saw an unprecedented explosion in the
world’s population, much more so than in the nineteenth century before. Largely due to
improvements in health and technology, death rates fell while birth rates took a longer
time period to drop, causing populations to rise not only in the “Third World” societies,
but also in affluent societies as well, as Habermas describes. This trend in population
growth during the twentieth century, which even now “expert opinions do not expect a
stabilization of world population” (Habermas 39), began to become “the mass” or “the
masses,” which eventually becomes a social structure or function all of its own, typically
referred to as the “proletariat.” Habermas recognized usage of the social form of “the
masses” in the nineteenth century, however it was not until the twentieth century that
“massive flows of people, mass organizations, and mass actions began to appear
intrusive enough to give rise to the vision of the ‘revolt of the masses’” (Habermas 39).
The plight of the proletariat and the changing structure of the welfare state and work
regime are of unique interest, however, this is of a micro-level analysis and will be
discussed later on in this essay.
Habermas briefly touches upon his astonishment at the speed in which the labor
system changed in the twentieth century, i.e. that “structural changes in the labor
system ignore the thresholds of centuries or millennia” (Habermas 40). Spurned by the
Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century, the world labor market flourished in the

7. Denning 6
twentieth century by further improvements in technologies, research and innovation.
The labor system made multiple changes during this time period, outlined by Habermas,
first; shifting from the realm of primary agricultural work that had defined humankind for
a millennia “into the secondary sectors of manufacturing industries,” (Habermas 40),
following the introduction of the Industrial Revolution. As industries grew more
specialized in the twentieth century, they again shifted, moving into “the tertiary sectors
of commerce, transportation, and services” (Habermas 40). Lastly, when postindustrial
societies moved from the modern to the postmodern, there was also a shift in work to
the quarternary sector, characterized by “knowledge-based economic activities such as
high-tech industries or the health-care sector, banking or public administration, all of
which depend on the influx of new information and, ultimately, on research and
innovation” (Habermas 40). Habermas made a point to mention the structural changes
of work and the nature of employment during the twentieth century to highlight the
immense changes the function of work undertook in such an incredibly short period of
time. What he refers to as a truly radical break from the past, the work force shifts from
“the masses” mainly tilling the soil in rural lifestyle to moving into the urban cites,
working for factories and then the service industries all within the course of a century.
Both of these sociostructural changes follow the theoretical rules of immanent social
change laid out by Sorokin earlier in that they are of a society’s functions changing
within itself without help of external societal factors. Once the Industrial Revolution
occurred, the modern society was ushered in, and with it many social structure changes
including demographic changes and structural changes in the nature of employment.

8. Denning 7
A Final Note on Macro-Level Sociostructural Change: Cycles in Social Processes
While there is similarity between Sorokin and Habermas in their writings on social
change theory and examples of these, they disagree as to the overall rhythms of social
change. Sorokin believes in a cyclical pattern of social process with only limited infinite
possibilities of changes and rhythms in social structure. He uses Aristotle’s argument to
parallel his own here, saying “any change can be thought of only as a passage between
antithetical terms, between two contrary...or contradictory terms” (Sorokin 653). With
social processes, there are usually five to ten types of “classes,” with the classification
of main types being relatively numerically small. Any social structure within a society
only has a finite amount of phases it can change through before it will eventually return
back to its beginning and start the cycle over again. For example, Sorokin gives:
isolation-contact; assimilation-conflict-adaptation; order-disorder; and so on. He admits
that these different stages may have different durations or even skip each other, but
once the cycle of social process reaches the end it will begin back over again.
In juxtaposition to Sorokin, Habermas sees social process changing in a linear-
type fashion. For Habermas, social processes are linear, meaning they have a strict
trajectory with a specific direction of change or a destiny, for example, a process that
Sorokin rejected outright in his book. Linear processes of social change may be
possible in truth, according to Sorokin, however only for a short span of time. Any linear
process of change is merely just a part in a long, nonlinear cyclical trend.
Part Two:MicroSocialStructure Theory

9. Denning 8
In Sociology, the historical approach of theory has been to look at the science at
the macro-level, however Smelser ponders “about the continuing viability of this focus”
(Smelser 50). Which is why, in the later theoretical writings of such authors as Beck
and Bauman, while aspects of the macro-level are analyzed, theorists start to assess
how the macro-level social structures of a society are affecting individuals at the micro-
level. This will be the focus of part two of this analysis. The micro-level sociological
analysis, according to Smelser, simply means “the study of the person as oriented to
the external, especially the social, world” (Smelser 5). Contemporary theorists of the
modern and post-modernities have focused on the welfare state and the change in labor
functions primarily and how these changes are affecting collective individual attitudes
within society, which will be the bulk of analysis in part two.
The Welfare State
As Habermas observed, the booming population during the twentieth century
caused dramatic and radical changes in the system of work, however, these collections
of “the masses” began to give rise to the psychology of the “’revolt of the masses’”
(Habermas 39). During the Great Depression Era came the revolutionary New Deal
policies and thus the welfare state was born. In his 1998 critique of society post-New
Deal policies, Anthony Giddens analyzes macro-level functions, stating the overall
purpose of state functions should be to provide public goods to individuals of society.
Public goods in this sense include peace, security, education, and public benefits that
the state should provide, including the welfare state. Giddens calls for “reform directed

10. Denning 9
towards greater transparency and openness, as well as the introduction of new
safeguards against corruption” (Giddens 73), to improve welfare state programs.
Giddens is in full support of the comprehensive welfare system, as he sees
society now structured in forms of inclusion and exclusion. In contemporary societies,
two main forms of exclusion have moved to the forefront, the first is the “exclusion of
those at the bottom, cut off from the mainstream of opportunities society has to offer”
(Giddens 103). The second is the voluntary exclusion, “the ‘revolt of the elites’: a
withdrawal from public institutions on the part of more affluent groups, who chose to live
separately from the rest of society” (Giddens 103). It is because of these exclusions and
inequalities Giddens that supports the theory and ideology of the welfare state, or
‘positive welfare’ as he refers to it. He reflects on the welfare state policy’s critics and
how they have claimed that it can be:
Essentially undemocratic, depending as it does upon a top-down
distribution of benefits. Its motive force is protection and care, but it does
not give enough space to personal liberty. Some forms of welfare
institution are bureaucratic, alienating and inefficient, and welfare benefits
can create perverse consequences that undermine what they were
designed to achieve (Giddens 113).
Giddens however, sees these critiques as potential avenues for the welfare state to be
improved as post-modernism societies further develop.
Zygmunt Bauman analyzed the welfare state around the same time as Giddens,
agreeing with him about the function of the welfare state and the need for it within

11. Denning 10
society. He wrote that the functions of the welfare state are to first; increase the overall
wellness and decrease hardship for people and second; to ensure economic survival of
labor and capital. Similar to Giddens’s reasons for continuing the welfare state into the
future despite critique, Bauman gives moral reasons for the continuation of the welfare
state as well. He agrees with critics on the grounds the economic argument for the
welfare state is no longer efficient and claims that in its stead the moral view is now the
main argument for the continuation of the welfare state. As rational human actors, it is
morally right to take care of one another within society and we should use the
humanitarian point of view to “reassert, boldly and explicitly, the ethical reason for the
welfare state—the only reason needed by the welfare state to justify its presence in a
humane and civilized society” (Bauman 78). He asserts in his book that is it the moral
responsibility of governments to take care of its citizens via the welfare state, especially
those who may have fallen on hard times and need the assistant of welfare state
programs.
The Welfare State Divide: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat
Pierre Bourdieu analyzes the welfare state on the micro-level by discussing how
much differently members of the bourgeoisie (ruling class) and the proletariat (working
class) view the policies. The bourgeoisie will favor the welfare state only as long as
they see a gain for them and in his example the gain was purely economic. As he puts
it, the ruling class will support the welfare state as long as its policies “’create[s] the
conditions favourable to lasting growth, and the confidence of the investors’” (Bourdieu

12. Denning 11
46). By provides some sort of economic benefit for the individuals of the ruling class will
they support the welfare state. Unfortunately, this undermines Bauman’s argument in
favor of support for the welfare state because it is simply moral and just. It is true the
economic arguments for the welfare state are no longer efficient, but by Bourdieu’s logic
it is in the bourgeoisie’s best interest to essentially “bury the welfare state” in order to
safeguard their own economic entitlements. Because of the nature of the ruling class,
Bourdieu gives example of how they will only support the welfare state if they see
benefit for themselves, showing a possible complication to Bauman’s morality
argument.
The Change in Work Structure moving from Modernism to Post-Modernism
As society moves from modernism into a period of post-modernism, the way
individuals view and define “work” has begun to shift and change. Specifically in
Western societies, modernism was defined by a fixed and stable work society.
Revolutionized by the ideals of Henry Ford and his “Fordism” process, workers in the
modernism era could enjoy the stability of their careers and could stay at their careers
for possibly a lifetime up until retirement. According to Bauman, Fordism was based
simply on Ford’s desire to make his employees “dependent on employment in his
factory as he himself depended for his wealth and power on employing them” (Bauman
21). The modern era was characterized by the Fordism beliefs such as this where
workers could expect that once they began their career, they could feel a relative
amount of job stability and not have the need to worry about their job security.

13. Denning 12
As Western societies move from modernism to post-modernism, the work
structure has begun to take a different shape. Ulrich Beck provides an interesting
account of how work society has broken down in recent years in his book, Brave New
World of Work, saying essentially the structure of work has begun to devolve back to
that of the East, or as he terms it, the “Brazilianization” of the West. He begins his book
by stating “the unintended consequence of the neoliberal free-market utopia is the
Brazilianization of the West” (Beck 1). The rapid increase in scientific technology and
our increasing dependence on this technology could be seen as a potential cause of the
destructive force on the work structure, bringing about feelings of insecurity and unease
for individuals who are either working or attempting to work, in the post-modern era.
Beck uses Brazil as an example to show how Western work structures are beginning to
unintentionally model work structures of places such as Brazil to show how the Western
work society is devolving in the post-modern era. He believes there is a crisis of full
employment that was the hallmark of the work structure of the modernity period. Moving
forward, as the West continues on in this path, he predicts “in another ten years only a
half of employees will hold a full-time job for a long period of their lives, and the other
half will, so to speak, work à la bréslienne” (Beck 2). Overall, the general overlay of the
work structure moving into the post-modernism period is that the West has begun to
move away from secure full employment for most workers. A quintessential feature of
the post-modern period, the West has begun to devolve in this regard and “Brazilianize”
back to a work structure like the East.
How Post-Modern Work Structures affect Individuals

14. Denning 13
Looking at social structures within a micro-level analysis, this post-modern shift in
the work structure has affected how working-aged individuals construct meaning as they
react to losing confidence in having a stable career. Most workers were comfortable
with seeing their parents having stable and secure jobs for the duration of their working
lives and then retiring happily into the arms of social security benefits. Now, post-
modern workers are either working multiple full-time jobs during their career, or unable
to find full-time employment and having to juggle multiple part-time occupations to stay
out of the welfare state. Beck and Bauman both refer to this as the post-modern “risk
regime,” where individuals are now having accept and live with more inherent risk,
insecurity and uncertainty in their work lives. Economic insecurity is now the norm for
many in the Brazilianization of the West, and the insecurity workers feel leads to
unintended consequences, or a latent function, which was theoretically posed by Robert
Merton nearly thirty years earlier. In his book, Beck outlines how, through the entire
course of human history, individuals were defined by the work they did. Traditionally,
those who worked were lower class than the ruling class who did not have to work, and
as the modern period was ushered in, individuals began to own the work they did and
take pride in their careers. In post-modernism times, as full-time employment becomes
harder to find and individuals become more insecure about work, they must find a new
way to define themselves. When Beck and Bauman were writing their books, the main
feelings of the time were of insecurity and “unfreedom” (the dependence on welfare
state polices) . When the masses feel insecure about their careers and work futures,
their feeling lead to a theoretical “unfreedom” of sorts; a “iron cage of welfare-state
dependence” (Beck 96).

15. Denning 14
The issue Beck and Bauman theorized with masses of workers feeling these
insecure and “unfree” feelings is that they eventually lead to the crumbling of democracy
and the whittling away of the political sphere. The freedom loss of the proletariat leads
to what is defined as “anomie,” a term used by Merton in his 1968 book and exemplified
here in this sense. Anomie, here, is to mean “the society becomes unstable and
therefore develops what Durkheim called ‘anomie’ (or normlessness)” (Merton 189).
Overall, societal goals are understood for individuals in each society and if an individual
finds he cannot meet these ascribed goals, he experiences anomie; the breakdown of
social bonds between an individual and the community (Merton). When workers cannot
achieve employment and experience anomie, the problem Bauman and Beck notice is
that the feelings of unfreedom leads to a passive proletariat who are pliable and
malleable to the ruling class. The ruling class will notice this and claim dominion over
the vast masses of insecure workers, using the passive masses for ruling classes’ own
gains to perpetuate their own successes. Bauman writes about the reproduction of fear
leading to an overwhelming ambivalent society united in indifference due to the
breakdown of labor. He writes of the proletariat, it is “their own lack of power that
crystallizes in their eyes as the awesome might of the strangers. The weak meets and
confronts the weak; but both feel like Davids fighting Goliaths” (Bauman 91). In
Bauman’s analysis, the safety nets have either weakened or fallen apart altogether as
the numbers of people who need them grow, so people have begun to become
ambivalently fearful of their futures and the society that they belong to.
Conclusion

16. Denning 15
As Western societies move from modern to post-modern, theorists have begun to
look at social structures with much more interest than they did before. By giving us
definitions of macro and micro-level analyses from Smelser, we are able to understand
social structures at the macro-level and how they affect individuals within the micro-
level. At the macro-level, there is an interesting debate on how social structures change.
This is highlighted by Sorokin in his 1957 book and Habermas gives further examples of
this. The welfare state is a particularly interesting social structure that arose in the
twentieth century due to the Great Depression and overwhelming numbers of “the
masses” who were in need of assistance. Giddens gives thorough argument for why
the welfare state should exist in his book. Furthermore, although Bauman and Bourdieu
wrote in very close time frames, they hold opposite views on the future of the welfare
state, as apparent in their analysis and opinions. Analyzing social structure at the
micro-level, as we move into the post-modern era, work structures change and work
becomes less secure for individuals, which has led to Merton’s anomie, or unintended
consequences of fear and ambivalence. Beck and Bauman are both in agreement of
this, yet multiple futures are possible for the work society, according to Beck. Some
potential futures are positive, some not so positive, yet he attempts to predict the work
structure future for Western individuals. For all of these potential futures there is both a
hopeful stance and a pessimistic stance, but overall, future work societies should aim
no longer to regain full employment in the classical sense, in which
freedom, political action and democracy were at once facilitated,
dominated and circumscribed by paid labour...[rather] here the political
goal will be defined as something that is (also) possible: namely, to open

17. Denning 16
up and secure new spaces in which a variety of activities—family work
and public-civil labour—are able to develop (Beck 15).
Perhaps, in this way Western societies can reverse the Brazilianization of the work
structures which have been occurring, or at least shift the way individuals view work to
alleviate the fear and ambivalence the masses of proletariat are feeling.

18. Denning 17
Works Cited
I. Bauman, Z. (2001). The Individualized Society. Polity Press in association with
Blackwell Publishers, Inc: Malden, MA.
II. Beck, U. (2000). The Brave New World of Work. Polity Press, Blackwell
Publishers Ltd: Malden, MA.
III. Bourdieu, P. (1998). Acts of Resistance; Against the Tyranny of the Market. New
York Press, New York, NY.
IV. Giddens, A. (1998). The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy. Polity
Press; Malden, MA. Press Malden, MA.
V. Habermas, J. (2001). The Postnational Constellation. (First MIT Press Edition);
Polity Press.
VI. Merton, R. K. (1968). Social Theory and Social Structure (1968 Enlarged
Edition). New York, NY: The Free Press, New York.
VII. Smelser, N. J. (1997). Problematics of Sociology. Los Angeles, CA: University of
California Press.
VIII. Sorokin, P. (1957). Social and Cultural Dynamics (One-Volume Ed.). Boston,
MA: Porter Sargent Publisher.