View on religion

Sociologist view on religion:

• Functionalist view (+) religion as a contributor to the fulfilment of social order and stability
• Marxists view (-) religion as feature only of class divided society
• Feminists view religion as partriarchal that legitimates female subordination
• Postmodernist view on religion as consumerism and privatised form, is not decling but simply taking a different
• Interactionists view on religion as socially constructed and emerges when there is historical or social change
• Antropologist view on religion: Geertz view religion as expression (symbolism) of social behavior in psychological term “(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic”

Psychologist view on religion:

• Jung view (+) religion as fitrah (arabic word for original disposition or natural constitution) “human quest for wholeness (integration of conscious and unconscious components of the psyche) through a process called individuation”
• Freud view (-) religion as result of daddy issues (father complex) “Infantile need for a powerful father figure; religion, necessary to help us restrain violent impulses earlier in the development of civilization, can now be set aside in favor of reason and science”. Freud Will of Power concept.

Wiki: Psychology of religion, Sigmund Freud’s views on religion

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Political Transition 1966 Theory

There are several school of thought of 1966 political transition 1) Structuralist (Theda Skocpol) 2) Conflict Theory (Benedict Anderson, Cornell Paper). Skocpol menekankan pada 1) Tekanan internasional 2) Ketahanan negara dan 3) konflik kelas. Cornell Paper menekankan pada 1) Political involvement of military 2) Antagonistic interaction of capital and isolated city

Skocpol mengambil contoh kasus revolusi yang sukses (Perancis 1789; Rusia 1917 dan Cina 1911) dan revolusi yang gagal (Inggris 1640-60; Jepang 1868-73; dan Jerman, 1848-50). Pendekatan Skocpol sangat bersifat struktural dan dikritik kurang memperhatikan faktor kelompok dan budaya dalam revolusi seperti yang terbukti berperan penting dalam kasus Iran 1979.

Skocpol menekankan perbedaan pola antara Revisonism Rusia Front dan Revolusioner RRC ref

• Strategi Revisionism Rusia mengalami kegagalan di Cina (Shanghai, 1927), Jerman (1933), Indonesia (1948) dan Singapura (1950an). Namun pola ini berhasil di Rusia (1917), Vietnam-Utara (1941-46), Cekoslovakia (1948), Laos (1975) dan Afganistan (1973).
• Strategi Revolusioner China berhasil di RRCina (1949), Camboja (1975), dan Nicaragua (1979), namun mengalami kegagalan seperti di British-Malaya (1948-55), Bolivia (1966), dan Peru (1980an), termasuk Indonesia to some degree hybrid (1966)

Wiki: Sino-Soviet split, Revisionism (Marxism), Marxism–Leninism

Sociology 101

A lot of things that we see in life is just a fact or phenomena that meaningless. For example, we see the price of fuel is increase every year. We see that people getting poor, we see people fighting, we see people laughing all the time. Fact is meaningless, just like data is meaningless. However this data will be useful when we create a relationship. According to wiki, “Sociological theories are statements of how and why particular facts about the social world are related”.

This is the thing that makes me confuse, when I learn about energy, I only learn about the facts part, for example the oil prodution is decline, the oil price is increase, the people only use less than 35 Kg LPG, there are 100 million motorcycle.

Therefore if I want to understand something I need to use a theory, for example, the relation between energy consumption type and household income (energy ladder theory). However if I don’t want to examine that relationship, we can say that energy ladder is not empirically proven. So instead using energy ladder, I can use energy stack. That in another case energy consumption is not linear but multiple according to income.

Wiki: Sociological theory, robert putnam, wikibooksref

Sociological Theory

A theory is more impressive the greater is the simplicity of its premises, the more different are the kinds of things it relates and the more extended its range of applicability
Albert Einstein (quoted in Rifkin, 1980: 43)

Causal Interpretation = Premise = Logic

Marxist

• Perspective: Historical Materialism, Dialectic
• Causal Interpretation: Society gap cause conflict
• Implementation: For better society, a revolution should be made

Functionalist:

• Causal Interpretation: Deviant cause conflict
• Implementation: For better society, a welfare improvement should be made

Secular

• Causal Interpretation: Human cause advance
• Implementation: For better society, priority should be to human

Religious

• Causal Interpretation: Deity cause advance
• Implementation: For better society, priority should be to spiritual balance

MLP

• Causal Interpretation: Governance (Multi-layer actor) cause transition
• Implementation: For better society, energy policy should include multi-layer. E.g policy to subsidized renewable energy
• Purpose: To explain roles of governance
• Success: Explain household transition (why LPG is success and why Coal Briquette is not)
• Failure: Electricity transition case

TIS

• Causal Interpretation: Innovation cause transition
• Implementation: For better society, energy policy should promote innovation. E.g policy to subsidized solarpv
• Purpose: To explain roles of technology
• Success: Explain electricity innovation (Why Geothermal is success and why Solar PV is not)
• Failure: Coal briquette case, in contrast with successful LPG transition.

How to attack a theory

Counter Attack
Theory says: kemiskinan menciptakan kejahatan
Evidence: most of crime (in term of frequency) happen on poor area
Usage: to prevent crime, poverty alleviation is required

Critics: kemiskinan tidak menciptakan kejahatan, ignorance menciptakan kejahatan
Evidence: some of biggest crime (in term of amount) happen on rich area
Usage: to prevent crime, education is required

Sub Counter Attack
Theory says: kemiskinan menciptakan kejahatan
Sub Theory says: pengangguran menciptakan kemiskinan
Sub Theory says: pengangguran menciptakan kejahatan

Evidence: most of crime (in term of frequency) happen on poor area, conducted by jobless people
Usage: to prevent crime, mass employment is required

Why sociological theory is easy to be argued

Causation is a belief concept. People might believe that saving make people rich, saving cause rich. However this belief is not always true. When people save money, at certain amount they will consume into something that is not useful, for example they buy car. The car need gas, need insurance and at some point is broken and it makes that people poor.

However in research (argumentative, opinion based writing), people might argue that saving will make people to live frugal, therefore saving will not make people buy expensive car. The proponent of this theory will explain that if people always save money they will be rich, if people save 20% of its income for duration 10 years they will reach 1,000 USD (for example, that is quantitative analysis). The scholar that use this research might argue that if a society does not save, they will become poor.

Let see MLP theory, criticized by Levidow and Upham (2017)

• Niche-innovations build up internal momentum, through learning processes, price/performance improvements, and support from powerful groups,
• Landscape-level changes create pressure on the regime and
• Regime destabilisation creates opportunities for niche innovations

When the theory wrong
This theory might be wrong if there is one example that can prove each causation belief is wrong. For example, in MLP case, landscape-level changes not always create pressure e.g palm oil pressure in Indonesia, although international NGO give pressures, nothing happen. Regime destabilisation is prove to be wrong, for example with NEP 2006, but no results. So there must be another explanation which not based on MLP

When the theory right
Well in some cases such as geothermal might be right (maybe)

Is it useful?
Always, to explain the layer of transition . Belief that transition occur in multilayer.

Conceptualization of Technology

Technology is invention of tangible things and skills (Rip and Kemp 1998)
Technology does not determine human action, but that rather, human action shapes technology

SCOT (Bijker and Pinch 1984)

Case study:
Bakelite (Early Plastic) Leo Baekeland in Yonkers, New York, in 1907.

Science, knowledge, Technology is social construction

Update 23 Aug 2017

Saya membaca paper mengenai “teknologi”, dejavu seperti membaca paper mengenai “scenario”. Ilmuwan selalu memulai bahasannya dengan konseptualisasi. Jadi menulis tentang scenario mulai dengan konseptualisasi scenario, e.g scenario itu apa, bagaimana, kapan dst. Sama seperti teknologi bicara konseptualisasi energi, berupa pernyataan seperti: Teknologi itu tangiable, itu transformer, itu key aspects (Rip and Kemp 1998). Setelah konsepnya jelas, baru masuk ke konsep utama, e.g Technological Change. Dimana mendapat konseptual ini? adanya di buku. Bukan di paper.

Sebenarnya konseptualisasi ini juga bukan barang baru. Konseptualisasi teknologi sudah mulai jauh sebelumnya dengan SCOT (Social Construction of Technology), ini sudah didefine dari tahun 1970-an, cuman luas sekali. Yang lebih spesifik diarahkan ke sustainability adalah yang Rip dan Kemp tadi. Jadi dalam membuat konseptualiasi, sanad itu sangat penting.