they are producing.
On the other hand, Walby (2020) argues that the macro concept of society should not be dispensed with but is in need of development to meet the challenges posed by globalization, colonization and Europeanization. She maintains that two central sociological traditions need to be combined if this is to be achieved; one (from Durkheim) based on society as a set of institutions, the other (from Marx) viewing society as a set of relations of inequality. This means combining the institutional domains of economy, polity, violence and civil society with regimes of inequality such as social class, gender and ethnicity.
Walby (2020: 2–3) uses the concept of a ‘social system’, drawing on recent work in complexity science, to bring these two traditions together. Specifically, she introduces the concept of ‘societalization’, which suggests a process of movement towards closer alignment of social systems without actually reaching full integration. In this way the concept of society can still be useful for sociological analysis, as ‘Nation state building, Europeanisation and globalisation are all examples of societalization’, even though full congruence into a single ‘society’ may not be the endpoint. Perhaps it is not inevitable that globalization will kill off sociology’s founding concept after all.
References and Further Reading
Durkheim, É. ([1893] 1984) The Division of Labour in Society (London: Macmillan).
Elias, N. ([1939] 2000) The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell).
Jenkins, R. (2002) Foundations of Sociology: Towards a Better Understanding of the Human World (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), esp. chapter 3.
Urry, J. (2000) Sociology Beyond Societies: Mobilities for the Twenty-First Century (London: Routledge).
__ (2007) Mobilities (Cambridge: Polity).
Walby, S. (2020) ‘Developing the Concept of Society: Institutional Domains, Regimes of Inequalities and Complex Systems in a Global Era’, Current Sociology, July: 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0011392120932940
Williams, R. (1987) Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (London: Fontana).
THEME 2Doing Sociology
Ideal Type
Working Definition
The researcher’s ‘pure’ construct of a social phenomenon, emphasizing only some of its main aspects, which is used to approach the similarities and differences in concrete, real-world cases.
Origins of the Concept
The concept of the ideal type was devised by Max Weber as part of his method for studying social action as a form of sociology. For Weber, understanding and explaining social life was not possible using the same methods as the natural sciences. Human beings, unlike other beings in the natural world, create a meaningful environment, and to understand their individual actions we have to set these within the context of that social environment. Of course, people create organizations and social institutions, which some sociologists see as their main object of research, but Weber ([1904] 1949) argued that a full account of social phenomena has to be understandable at the level of individual action. This approach to sociology is known as Verstehen, and Weber used it to explore the origins and key aspects of capitalism and its relationship to religious belief, the different types of economic life across societies, types of authority and leadership, and forms of organization in different historical periods. Constructing ideal types was an important element of Weber’s method that allowed him to bring together the macro and micro levels of sociological analysis.
Meaning and Interpretation
Ideal types are ‘constructs’ – that is, they are created by researchers on the basis of criteria derived from their interest in a particular social phenomenon. For example, we could construct an ideal type of socialism, democracy, cybercrime, consumer society or moral panic. However, in making the construct, we do not aim to combine as many aspects of the phenomenon as possible in order to produce an accurate depiction of it. Because, Weber argued, sociology cannot replicate the experimental methods of the natural sciences, we need to find other ways of gaining valid knowledge of society, and the ideal type is one useful tool which helps us do that.
For example, if we want to understand the ‘new terrorism’ of al-Qaeda networks and the self-styled Islamic State (Daesh), we can identify some typical aspects from our observations – perhaps their global connections, loose organizational forms, disparate aims and preparedness to use extreme violence against civilian targets (Lister 2015). Then we can create our ideal type around these central features. Of course, real cases of the new terrorism will include more than just these elements, and, in some cases, one or more elements may be absent while others are more prominent. For example, Daesh actions in Syria and Iraq involved creating an effective army, rather than a loose network, that succeeded in temporarily taking and holding territory. However, in creating an ideal type we are intentionally creating a one-sided model, a pure form, which probably does not or could not exist in reality. Those people, cells and organizations involved in the new terrorism may actually behave in ways that diverge from our ideal type. But the point of the exercise is to highlight a logically derived form of the new terrorism which will enable us to compare it with older forms and pick out significant similarities and crucial differences among real-world cases much more easily. Ideal types are heuristic devices – research tools that sociologists use to devise hypotheses and make comparisons.
An ideal type is akin to a standpoint from which we can observe the social world, a reference point that enables the researcher to begin to formulate some realistic questions about the phenomena in question. Hence, ideal types can never be said to be true or false, and it was not Weber’s intention that they should be tested against empirical cases in the same way that might be the situation with scientific hypotheses, and then falsified if negative instances are found. Their value lies in the research that flows from them and the contribution they make to our understanding. If ideal types fail to give us any better grasp of reality or just do not work in generating further research questions and studies, they will simply be abandoned as, simply and literally, useless.
Critical Points
Weber’s critics see ideal types as being of limited use in sociology. Norbert Elias, for instance, caustically remarked that it was strange to think we should spend our time constructing ideal types when we can study ‘real types’ or empirical cases instead. This criticism seems a good one, though we have to remember that ideal types are meant to be ‘sensitizing concepts’, one of the preliminary stages of research, which will then develop into formal empirical studies.
A further problem with ideal types lies more in the way they are used than in the concept itself. In particular, what starts out as a heuristic device to aid understanding can quickly become a real characterization that needs to be defended. In short, a fictitious ideal type comes to be treated as though it represents a real social phenomenon and, instead of aiding understanding, becomes an obstacle to it. Talcott Parsons observed this slippage even
