Lecture 4: Conflict Theories

 

I. All conflict theories trace their roots to Karl Marx and Max Weber

A. Marx: “The mode of production à the relations of production à the ‘superstructure’” (So, the economy determines everything else in a given society.)

B. Capitalism creates a two-class society: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat

1. Bourgeoisie are the owners of the means of production (e.g. factories)

2. Proletariat, the working class, must sell their labor power as means to subsistence

3. Bourgeoisie constantly seeks to increase profit + reduce costs

                   4. Hence, conflict theory

C. Principal roles of the super-structural elements of industrial capitalism

1. Reproduction

2. Legitimation

II. Randall Collins (a Weberian conflict-oriented theorist)

          A. Evaluates functionalism in terms of its logic

                   1. & the propositions derived from that logic

          B. The “expansion” of education

C. Technical-function theory assumes:

1. There is a decrease in low-skill jobs & an increase in high-skill jobs

2. Formal education provides training for higher-skilled jobs

D. Collins uses data to evaluate this theory’s several propositions.

1. Prop. 1: change in job skills à increasing ed. Requirements for jobs

                   2. Prop. 2: Formal education provides required job skills

Key: the available evidence does not empirically support the technical-function theory of educational expansion

III. Collins’s alternative explanation

A. Status groups (or subcultures): “associational groups sharing common (sub)-cultures”

          B. Struggles for advantage relative to other groups

                   1. Competition between groups

                   2. Carried out – and institutionalized – through organizations

          C. Education is the means of transmission for status culture

1. Thus which status group controls education is key

2. Public schools created by WASP’s to inculcate their values and culture

3. Private secondary (etc.) schools created to offset the effects of immigration (diluting the WASP message)

D. Schools serve as organizational-institutional mechanisms for the differentiation of status groups

1. As competition between & among groups intensifies, education expands dramatically

2. Expansion in U.S., faster than anywhere else

Educational certificates as, in effect, “weapons” in an ongoing competition between & among status groups.

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