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

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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.

Causation (Sociology)

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles

View on crime:

• Functionalist view on crime is an inevitable and normal aspect of social life
• Marxist view on crime as a result of inequality and poverty, which caused by oppression and exploitation of the majority
• Feminist view on crime as womens crimes are largely the crimes of the powerless, crime as rational alternative
• Postmodernist view crime as expression of those with power of how people should conduct themselves and denies peoples freedom
• Interactionist view on crime as no actions are by nature criminal or deviant it depends on the norms of the society

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

Notes:
whichever class controls the economic production also controls the production and distribution of ideas in society via institutions such as church, education system and the media

Women have not always been subordinate to men in religion, 6000 years ago (earth mother goddes, fertility cult, female priesthoods), 400 years ago shift toward monotheistics religion (patriarchial)

Update 23 Aug 2017: Causation

Marxist view crime as causation.

• Poverty cause crime
• Effect of poverty is crime
• Consequences of poverty is crime

However, functionalist view crime as a fact (social fact). For durkheim crime is inevitable, as safety valve, a warning device, an anomie (Merton).

Some researcher might think that complexity is a causation, well in some cases it can be seen as only a social fact. (the problem of social thinker is overthinking, they try to relate everything).

Postmodernism (Sociology)

Agama menurut Karl Marx adalah candu, candu yang digunakan elit penguasa kepada kelas pekerja sebagai false hope. Tapi, menurut Marx juga, agama adalah “form of protest”, sarana untuk protes yang digunakan oleh kelas pekerja terhadap kondisi ekonomi dan keterasingannya. Jadi, seorang Karl Marx saja, tidak bisa mendefinisikan religion dengan jelas, disatu sisi positif, disisi lain negatif.

Postmodern view on religion:
Postmodern resulted in

• decline of dominant religions
• growth of fundamentalism
• spread of new religious organisations

Postmodern view on crime:

• New definition of crime (e.g using power to show disrespect to others)
• Private security ref