CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES AND THE MODERN SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION 1

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1 (Manuscript for Jopi Nyman (ed.) Studies in the Sociology of Education and Culture. Publications of the Department of Sociology 6/2005, University of Joensuu) CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES AND THE MODERN SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION 1 Ari Antikainen 1. Classical Social Theory and the Sociology of Education In European sociology, the latter half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th was the period of the classics. Karl Marx ( ), Emile Durkheim ( ) and Max Weber ( ) each presented their own critical commentaries on the economic, political and social processes shaping society and the world in the process of modernization. They gave rise to classical social theory (cf. Holton 1996) that was becoming independent from moral philosophy and political philosophy, albeit somewhat lacking in definition in terms of time and space. Two social changes, namely the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, are considered to have had a decisive impact on its content. Industrialization and the development of capitalism, secularization and individualization, rationalization and the development of modern bureaucracy, as well as urbanization and the development of democracy, were the processes in the midst of which the classics of sociology lived and which they addressed in their works. Many of these processes have continued at least up to the present day, and thus the classics thinking has been the source of ever new influences for modern sociology, too, although some scholars consider their significance to be largely historical. Social Structure One of the pivotal contributions of the classics may be crystallized in the concept of social structure (Holton 1996, 27). By structure they meant those systems of social interrelations that appeared to affect the lives of individuals as external forces. The idea of social structure originated from 18th century Enlightenment philosophy, but the works of Marx and Durkheim are the definitive classical sources of the concepts of structure and action. Durkheim, like Marx, drew a clear distinction between nature and society (Holton 1996, 32). He defined it by saying that social reality is the unique reality (sui generis), or that social or social facts as he wrote should be explained by the social, i.e. other social facts, and not by the biological or psychological. This argument thus justified sociology as its own autonomous science. Today, we can also criticize it and emphasize the importance of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches. Durkheim, formerly Professor of Education, was subsequently appointed Professor of Sociology at the University of Sorbonne in 1912, occupying the first Chair of sociology in Europe. For him, the central question concerning social structures was: How is society possible under modern conditions? That is, conditions, where traditions were broken and individualism flourished. His reply was that the prevailing model of social solidarity keeps society intact. By social solidarity he meant consensus of values, or moral consensus, and society s normative regulation. While Marx maintained that the means of production was the glue that kept 1 The paper is based on my manuscript of Chapter 11, Monet kasvatussosiologiat? (Many Sociologies of Education?) in Antikainen, A., Rinne, R. & Koski, L Kasvatussosiologia (Sociology of education). Helsinki: WSOY.

2 society together, in Durkheim s view it was moral duty. But it is also social, external and coercive, rather than personal commitment. In his book The Division of Labour in Society and in his later writings, he examines the transition from collective and rigid mechanical solidarity towards more individual and permissive organic solidarity. Due to Durkheim s functional approach and normative explanation, he has sometimes been seen as a conservative thinker. If Durkheim is a conservative, then the majority of sociology shares his conservatism. In his own time, he was a political and cultural radical. Alongside an economic explanation, Durkheim brought into sociology a normative explanation. Social Action If the question How is society possible? is changed to the form Why do people act the way they act?, Max Weber s contribution to classical sociological theory (Holton 1996, 40) may be more naturally described. In addition to Marx and Durkheim s placing of structures above action and human agency, they may be deemed in their emphasis of the material (Marx) or the moral and normative (Durkheim) to represent an one-dimensional, causal explanation of action. Weber, on the other hand, strove to develop a multidimensional approach to social action, where structure and human agency, and the material and the normative were combined. Weber s point of departure was individual action and the idea that people act on the basis of the meanings they give to the social world around them. Consequently, according to Weber, people do not act coerced by social facts, but in accordance with socially constructed meanings. Thus, his sociology is understanding (verstehen) of the action of actors. In Europe, it is called the verstehende method, and often in America, the interpretative approach. Society, in turn, is only possible if it enables action that is relevant to the individual, which in practice means the existence and implementation of different values and interests. Weber, too, did see coercive forces in modernization. For him, the central process was rationalization, or the growth of impersonal logics led by calculativity, intellectualism and instrumental goals. Like an iron cage, they can govern meaningful human action and lead to the disenchantment of the world. The triumph of bureaucracy as an organizational model or the view of technological development as an intrinsic value would be good examples of this iron cage like development. We should also mention Weber s concept of legitimate dominance as an example of the fusion of structure and action in his works. Weber distinguishes between the concepts of power (Macht) and dominance (Herrschaft). Power represents action which can succeed in fulfilling its objectives even when the objects of power are in opposition or in a position of resistance. War and class conflicts are examples of such action. Legitimated dominance, on the other hand, precludes the voluntary commitment of those under dominance, and thus enables meaningful action. Dominance can acquire legitimacy through three alternative principles: tradition, rational legitimacy, represented by e.g. prescribed law, or through charisma. Charisma refers to leaders personal qualities. Weber believed in charisma as a counterforce for rationalization and bureaucratization. This idea also has its weaknesses, as we find, if we list charismatic political leaders, starting with Hitler and Stalin. G.H. Mead (1934) developed the social analysis of the self much further than the European theorists. For him, the self was a social unit. It cannot be placed, unlike the psyche was placed by the Greeks, in the heart, the head or in any organ. It is a social entity which must be related to the whole body (Holton 1996, 47). Thus, Mead cleared the way for the current concept of the embodied self, and for breaking the Cartesian mind/body dualism. Thus, the self is formed in social interaction, but it is not a puppet of social forces. A wider symbolic order is similarly formed in social interaction between people, but also with ideas and objects. The crucial idea is that not only

3 interaction but active communication is necessary for it. The key factor is gesture, whether verbal or non-verbal speech, body language or equivalent. It is said that Mead invented the concept of gesture while observing the behaviour of dogs. Gestures carry meanings and information. Play or a game would seem to be Mead s model or metaphor for the mechanism of creation of a symbolic system. For a child, it was such in a concrete way, since a child enters a network of relationships through the generalized other or social values through games and the internalization of their rules. So, like Durkheim, Mead ended up with a symbolic system that was above individuals, but for him, that system was based on human agency and interaction between human individuals. Thus, Mead s contribution was the combination of individual and social observations of social order. He has faced the criticism that his sociological theory does not show a clear connection between interpersonal micro level and macro level structures. Classical sociological theory posed at least the following theoretical questions: the question of structure and human agency, the question of the problem of social order, the question of the place of meaning, and the question of the nature of self. It talked of markets, capital, the state, but little of race and ethnicity. It was largely silent on questions of gender and the world outside Europe and the United States with the exception of Weber s study of world religions. The Sociology of Education All three classics, Marx, Durkheim and Weber, have extended a strong influence on the sociology of education. Durkheim is generally held to be the actual father or founder of the discipline, or its first representative. For decades, he held the post of Professor of Education at the universities of Bordeaux and Sorbonne a fact often kept quiet by sociologists before the founding of the Chair of sociology at the Sorbonne. He was also the only one of the three to engage in research directly concerning education. Durkheim s output is so wide-ranging and multidimensional that it is subject to different interpretations. From the perspective of educational research, his output contains important aspects both in terms of theory and content, as well as methodology. Perhaps the first thing to mention is that he engaged in systematic study of education and proposed a programme of sociology of education. It states e.g. the need for a historical and comparative study of the education system, study of the social functions or tasks of education, scrutiny of the school community and the roles of teacher and pupil, and study of the processes in a school classroom. It had a marked impact on later sociology of education, and it is apparent that many later general proposals of sociology of education have shadowed this programme, discussed in his book Education and Sociology (1956). The second key aspect in my view is that Durkheim examined morality, or actually societies and communities as moral units. He was interested in the integration of societies, held together by social solidarity. Here, too, education played an important role. In a secularized society, education and the school was taking the place of religion and the church. In an industrial society differentiated in terms of division of labour and containing diversity, governed by organic solidarity, formal or systematic education represented the official form of socialization. Teachers were like the priests of a secularized society, in any case representatives of society. The core of the community is what is held to be sacred, as opposed to the secular. What is sacred is not only God or his equivalent, but also many other things representing the community and its preservation. They are reproduced, that is their continuity is produced, largely in everyday established rituals, but also in festive occasions and other representations where the community like in an act of religious worship is celebrated. Morality was discussed by Durkheim in his book Moral Education (1961). Classifications of knowledge, too, originate in the methods of social organization, as Durkheim convincingly shows in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1954).

4 As the third aspect worthy of examination, I would name his theoretical-methodological thinking. Durkheim is often cited as the founder of sociological functionalism, and actually his social facts that is, his idea of the object of sociological study may be understood with the aid of social functions, one of the aspects of which is keeping an ever wider social community alive and functioning. Sociology is, for him, the science of institutions, their origins and functions. Function offers a methodology for the study of social facts, study which should be objective as in the natural sciences, or external, with the object of study precisely defined and its observation executed as if it was an object. The Rules of Sociological Method discusses this, and his work Suicide has been read by many generations of sociologists as a case study. When the main weakness of functionalism has been held to be its inability to explain social change and conflict, this criticism may be directed at Durkheim, too. However, his output also contains other than functionalistic studies. His study of the history of education in France, The Evolution of Educational Thought (1977), reveals clear characteristics of conflict theory. The same applies to his thinking on change in society s division of labour, and on how people can change their action and the values and norms that govern it by coming together, or through increasing communication and interaction. Education, to Durkheim, is methodical or systematic socialization, or society s official means of transmission its culture and social order to a new generation. Marx addresses education and training throughout his works, but only as one of many subsidiary topics. Later Marxist studies have examined in more detail e.g. the ideological role of the state in education and education as reproducer or maintainer of class society from one generation to the next. Weber, too, failed to directly address education. Yet, his importance in the sociology of education is great. Through seeing social stratification and conflicts as more multidimensional than Marx, Weber cleared the way for thinking on knowledge at least in the form of credentials as the mechanism of competition between social groups. Starting from the 1960s, the interactionist, or in America the interpretative school of research, influenced by the verstehende method, quickly gained ground. In the study of the school organization, Weber s idea of bureaucratization of society has been pivotal. For him, the characteristic features of bureaucracy were: precise division of labour, including definition of tasks and duties, a highly developed system of rules and regulations, hierarchical structure and clear definition of authority, impersonal and distant approach to other people, written documents and archiving, separation of administrative personnel and ownership, and mapping of progress and career structure. (Weber 1947) G.H. Mead s theory of action may be even more prevalent and significant than has been hitherto understood. A large proportion of Meadian empirical studies have concerned school interaction. Mead s approach, however, has much to offer also to the study of learning in general. His approach, in its emphasis on the learner s self-definition and definition of the situation, and their maintenance or development in social interaction, conflicts with the kind of study of learning that analyses learning as a function of the learner s intrinsic ability. In this respect, he is near the thinking of e.g. L.S. Vygotsky (MacLennan 2003). The influences of symbolic interactionism passed to the sociology of education e.g. through Florian Znanieck and Karl Mannheim. It is interesting that Mannheim, forced to move to England from Nazi Germany in the 1930s, used particularly the ideas of John Dewey and G.H. Mead in his programme of social (third way) reconstruction. Society or

5 plurality of societies as educator and the goal-oriented concept of man were ideas he adopted during his London period. 2. One or Several Sociologies of Education? In the 1980s, the condition and situation of sociology was often characterized by references to many sociologies. The plurality of sociological theory and methodology had resulted in a situation where even a common core was no longer deemed to exist. However, it could be argued that the plurality of sociology may also be exaggerated, and that unifying factors and attempts at synthesis are also to be found. In any case, fundamental theoretical and methodological differences have resulted at least from differences between structure and agency, macro level and micro level, and quantitative and qualitative method. Furthermore, opinions have been divided by postmodernism. The sociology of education was born at the turn of the century both in America and Europe as educational sociology, which endeavoured to solve the social problems of education using sociological thinking and research. The sociology of education emerged to respond to social challenges of its time, for example in the United States to multiculturalization of American society, and to carry the ideas represented by scientific thinking of the time. In the early decades of the century this meant that empirical sociological research modelled on the natural sciences combined with the traditional normativity of education or pedagogics was thought to solve social problems, once decision-makers were made aware of research results. In the United States this manifested as a technological orientation, a kind of social engineering, and in Europe as the advent of social pedagogics. The concept of educational sociology was first used by John Dewey, one of the founders of pragmatic philosophy. George E. Payne, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Educational Sociology, the discipline s first American journal founded in 1927, defined it as follows: By educational sociology we mean the science which describes and explains the institutions and social forms through which the child gains and organizes his experiences and those institutions and social forms in relation to which the child must function in adult life. These institutions and social forms are regarded particularly in their relation to the educational system in its evolution and changing functions. (Card 1959, 361). The institutional development of early educational sociology was rapid. According to Banks (1971), the number of universities offering courses in educational sociology in the United States and Britain alone rose from 40 in 1910 to 194 by the year Between the years 1916 and 1936, 25 general textbooks of educational sociology were published in these countries. Conversely, educational sociology did not become a professional discipline, unlike educational psychology or didactics, but for example educational administration sought its influences mainly from the teachings of business management. The later stages of the sociology of education vary depending on national and academic context. Therefore, I will not attempt to describe them here. Instead I will try to outline the sociological theories of education, as the basic coordinates of the field. Naturally, popularity of theories, too, has varied by nationality and ideology. Through the decades, however, a certain idea has been formed of the strengths and limitations of different theories in different research tasks or

6 applications (cf. Turner & Mitchell 1997; Morrow & Torres 1995; Demaine 2001; Izquierdo & Minguez 2003). It should be noted that sociological theory is a part of more general development in society and the social sciences. Furthermore, students of education have, as researchers, often been more interested in application of ready-made theories to the observation of their field and their practice, than in their creation. Sociological theories in sociology, politology, as well as in economics, often focus on one of the three levels of human social behaviour. The micro level observes the behaviour of individuals. Society and other social environments, such as institutions, are seen as contexts that allow, direct, interpret or limit the individual s actions. The objects of study are social consciousness, evolution of models of meaning and social interaction, and, for example, production of identities or assumption of roles. Intermediary or meso level theories deal with institutions and organizations. The targets for observation are groups and structures and the processes they contain, such as leadership and decision-making, role structure, professional careers and social identities. Macro level theories examine social order, social stratification and interaction between social institutions. The theories of the classics are a good example. Although socio-educational research is usually targeted at micro and meso levels, the theoretical map of the macro level is perhaps the most highly developed or at least the clearest. Sociological research into education has been largely dominated by four macro level theoretical approaches. They are functionalism, economic theories such as the exchange theory and the rational choice theory, conflict theories and interactionist theories. Interactionist theory most clearly also extends into micro levels. Functionalism Functionalism looks at how social structures and prerequisites and aims of a more confined social system, such as the education system, meet. In its basic form, functionalism is system thinking, which views society as a self-governing total system akin to a biological organism, where its structural parts (subsystems, for example social institutions) have their own cohesive functions (tasks). The fundamental question posed by functionalism is: how does this object of study (institution, role or ritual) further the integration of society. The most common object of study in the sociology of education has been the classification of the social functions of education, for instance, differentiation between the educational functions of qualification, socialization and selection. In the tradition of the sociology of education, the originator of this movement is Emile Durkheim, and the American Talcott Parsons s (1959) structural functionalism its most authoritative exponent. Parsons also had his own theory of action, which diverged from the thinking of Max Weber and economic liberalism precisely in its normativity. Parsons and Shils (1961, 150) express it as follows: What people want most is to be responded to, loved, approved and esteemed. Parsons viewed social action as systems on three levels. The social system consisted of roles corresponding with status and the norms governing them. Above it, culture comprised the values that integrate norms applied to roles. The system of personality thus consisted of the individual and his needs. The individual s action consists of choices of aims and means. Society is reproduced through individuals performing their roles in an environment delineated by values and norms. Functionalism has retained its position of authority, although its emphasis has

7 shifted from macro level to meso level. In addition, it has widened in the direction of general system theory (Vanderstraeten 2003). Economic Theories In economic, or more accurately utilitarian theories, social order is seen to evolve as the unplanned result of exchange activity between people. Rational choice theory emphasizes the rationality of actors and the hierarchic nature of values. Most utilitarian theories also make the assumption that actors endeavour to maximize their benefit in exchanges of resources with other actors. Thus, man is mainly a homo economicus, who acts selfishly in striving for benefit based on his personal preferences. Rational choice theories or more commonly rational action theories have been developed in many sciences, and there are several types of rationality (cf. Coleman & Fararo 1992). Following Weber s model, the subjective rationality of the individual may be the most natural starting point in sociological study. In many empirical studies of education, a certain general rationality of e.g. educational choices is acknowledged, but the results show that it does not alone explain choices, but the explanation also requires consideration of unequal distribution of resources, such as a family s cultural capital (e.g. Gambetta 1987). However, the human capital approach is the most influential representative of economic thinking in the sociology of education. Often, it operates both at micro and macro levels. In principle, human capital is generated in any action that raises the productivity of the individual worker. In practice, studies have focused on full-time education and training. According to the results of Gary Becker (1964) and other researchers of this approach, individual incomes vary in accordance with the amount of investment in human capital, when other variables have been standardized. On micro level, individuals are seen to calculate the ratio between the benefits gained by participation in training (such as higher pay or status) and the cost of training (such as time spent and lost pay), and to act accordingly. Here they are assisted by mass media, by its dissemination of information about wages and costs. On macro level, societies are seen to invest in education in order to improve accumulation of human capital, and thus to increase productivity. These theories have been favourite targets of sociological criticism. Critics of micro level question the rationality of actors, or its possibilities. Individuals are not deemed to possess the necessary comprehensive information, and on the other hand, social and cultural structures set constraints on individual action. On macro level, assumptions of social and economic productivity of training have been questioned. I am minded to think that the advent of new information technologies as an intermediary factor has increased the life span and popularity of human capital theory, and this thinking in general. For many critics, an alternative is provided by conflict theories. Conflict Theories Thus, functionalism is grounded on the idea that social order is founded upon some degree of acceptance and consensus of values and norms, and it sees conflicts as dysfunctional, as disorder. Economic theories, on the other hand, see exchange processes as pivotal, and conflicts as interruptions or disorder in these exchange relationships and activities. Conflict theories consider benefits or interests more important than values and norms, and see conflicts as a normal part of social life, and not as dysfunctional or exceptional. In that sense, social order is based on power and coercion rather than consensus of values. Marxist theories stress economic conflicts and consequently class conflicts, Weberian theories stress conflicts of power and dominance between status groups with more undefined boundaries.

8 The relationship between pupils cultural background and the school has been described using e.g. the concept of resistance (Willis 1978; Giroux 1983). The concept of resistance is rather nebulous, and it is comprehensible only in relation to reproduction theories. According to resistance theories, reproduction does not take place directly and immediately, but pupils and students may resist the school s objectives and actions. A well-known case study by Willis concerned English working class boys. The boys knew that they would end up working on the factory floor, and by their action e.g. by making fun and ridiculing the school s activities paradoxically brought about this fate conforming to their background. Weberian conflict theories, too, address the relationship between the stratification of education and society and its reproduction. Weber s concept of dominance, however, is wider that the Marxist concept of power. Similarly, status groups do not struggle like classes for not only power, but also honour, appreciation and cultural resources. Randall Collins s The Credential Society (1979) is a good example of Weberian conflict theory. For him, schools are instruments for maintaining cultural differences between individuals and groups. Status groups compete with each other and credentials are the central arena in this struggle and conflict. To Collins, compalsory education is associated with maintenance of military and political discipline, rather than knowledge and skills required by the world of work. The expansion of education and particularly of higher education is essentially the result of competition between status groups, and not as such particularly related to society s need and labour force requirements. The Marxist and Weberian conflict theories can also be seen as complementary. In this respect, the contribution of Pierre Bourdieu (1977; 1984) has been decisive. Finnish sociologists of education express their influences by Bourdieu as follows: Interactionist Theories Education is capital and an object of investment. It is amassed, sold and developed. Through education, everyone travels to his position in society. Education classifies, distinguishes and selects. It produces status, knowledge, style and wealth. The lot of some is also stupidity, lack of style and poverty. Education opens and closes routes in people s lives. (Kivinen, Rinne & Ahola 1989). Interactionist theories emphasize the meso and micro levels of human action and the social world. One could also talk about theories of symbolic interaction or symbolic interactionism (Blumer 1969; Plummer 1996). In the study of education, there are three clearly distinct interactionist approaches: symbolic interactionism and role theory, dramaturgical sociology and ethnomethodology, and phenomenological sociology. Symbolic interactionism was mainly developed by the so-called Chicago school, and in particular by George Herbert Mead (1934). The fundamental concept is that people act on the basis of meanings, and the object of study is how meanings originate in interaction. The self, too, is seen as a social product and it has at least two facets: the subjective self (I) and the objective self (me). The former is the creative side of the self and the latter the passive, social side that mirrors others. The self can also be seen as even more multidimensional. In interaction, there naturally are others, who may be people or ideas or objects. As a child develops, particularly through different kinds of play, he develops morality and values, or the generalized other. As well as in theory of socialization, symbolic interactionism has been applied in biographical research and in studies of school interaction. Thus, e.g. teachers and pupils concepts of self, definitions of situations and roles have been studied (Hargreaves 1967; Delamont 1976; Woods 1983; Pollard 1985). School interaction has been construed as a process of negotiation.

9 Erving Goffman (1983) in his original output sought interaction order to connect the micro and macro levels. The object of his study was what people and different people and in different situations do, when others are present. He based his studies largely on Emile Durkheim s ideas of the significance of rituals and symbols in everyday life. They are far from meaningless, but transfer the sacred and collective consciousness to a new generation. In his early works, he analysed social life in the light of a theatrical metaphor, saying that on different stages and different stage settings or frames people perform different roles and try to give different impressions (Goffman 1959). For him, social order is a consequence of any such group of moral norms that govern the way in which people strive to achieve their goals (Goffman 1963). So, everyday interaction models are systems or codes that reflect the whole rule system of the society, the interaction order. Face was an important object of study to Goffman, and he thought that people strive in every way to maintain face. One group of stages were total institutions, such as mental hospitals and prisons, but partially also schools that may label or even stigmatize their members (Goffman 1990). From this perspective, he studied the moral career of psychiatric hospital patients. Goffman s influences are visible for example in a study of school interaction, where his concept of encounter or conscious and planned interaction or the closely related concept of strategic interaction, or the concept of constitutive actions in a school s activity is applied (Woods 1983; Mehan 1992). So, attempts have been made at analyzing the tangles of interaction order. Goffman s insightful set of concepts of face-to-face interaction has also been called mini concepts. According to phenomenological philosophy, consciousness is the only phenomenon of whose existence we can be certain. The study of consciousness has been particularly founded on the philosophy of Edmund Husserl. Alfred Schutz based his own sociological study on Husserl s phenomenology, intent on examining how people construct the objects of consciousness and the information pertaining to them from an undifferentiated stream of experience, and how we take for granted the course of our everyday lives. The basic process (first order) of consciousness is typification, and the task of sociologists in turn is to construct (second order) typifications based on them, rational models within which people act like puppets. The so-called new sociology of education was influenced by phenomenology when it proposed that it should analyse those assumptions, held to be self-evident, that in the world of education are associated with definitions of school knowledge, success and failure, or a good and poor pupil (Young 1971; 1998). The new sociology of education brought school knowledge and the curriculum also to macro level, to social power, in its view that those in power for instance in the world of education the academic elite of universities try to define what is considered to be knowledge, what chance different groups have of becoming party to knowledge, and what is the nature of the relations between fields of knowledge and actors. However, Whitty (1985, 22) holds the view that the new sociology of education transferred micro level thought processes to macro level in too simplistic a manner. Ethnomethodology, too, is indebted to phenomenology. Garfinkel (1967) may be deemed to have founded it as a critique of Parsons and as a turning point towards Schutz s thinking. It studies the rules, structures and processes that make everyday life possible. Mostly, these deep-rooted taken for granted assumptions are examined as linguistic expressions, or definitions of people. Ethnomethodology has been received in a number of ways. In my view, however, a certain ethnomethodological stage or take is necessary in most empirical studies. It is also reflected in the title of folk sociology bestowed on ethnomethodology. The researcher must necessarily familiarize himself with the everyday life and language of the group he wants to study. The founders of social constructionism, Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1967), define reality as a class of phenomena that exist regardless of our will and which we cannot wish away. They say

10 that social reality is a result of people s creative action in two respects: made by people and constructed from meanings given by people. Thus, the evolution of social order is characterized by the following dialectics: Society is a human product. Society is an objective reality. Human being/individual is a social product. Constructivism as a general approach has gained great popularity. From a methodological viewpoint, symbolic interactionism and phenomenology, too, can be included within its boundaries. I come back to symbolic interactionism, which I consider to be the central interactionist theory. Traditionally, interactionism has taken a realistic view of interviews or people s narratives in general, or thought that they reflect reality, or how things are. However, construing the social as text the so-called linguistic or narrative approach has naturally had an effect on interactionism, too. Studies have been undertaken on the strategies of writing and the organization of narration. But Plummer (1996, 242) reminds us that the core of interactionist theory of meaning is able to compete with these new trends. He condenses it in four points: Meaning is never fixed and coded, but ever changing. It does not reside in objects or heads, but is generated in shared action. Meanings are not unambiguous. Many meanings are replicated and transformed to become customs or shared perspectives, but they have no final clarity. Meaning is formed in a triad. It depends on the gesture of one, the response of another, and the shared act that emerges between them. Meaning is always dependent on the interpretative process, and this process is ever readjusting itself in the collective social process. He expresses the same more concisely: meaning is not a fixed code, but struggle over signs or social dialogue about signs. But how can interactionism be applied to the study of education? The first answer is, in exactly the same way as to any other everyday object of study. The second answer is that in many respects it is eminently suitable precisely for the study of education, since education in itself is interaction, it takes place in encounters and in societies such as schools, and systems of education and training are quite clearly constructs of multi-level and multidimensional interaction. For instance, the concept of negotiation has been used in studies of classroom interactions. It has been applied to strategies of interaction used by pupils and the teacher in defining mutual, often non-verbal and casual modes of orientation, behaviour codes and modes of working in relation to the lesson (Woods 1983). Postmodernism and Poststructuralism Postmodernism and poststructuralism are related to the crisis of the modern project. They refer to a certain trend of culture and thinking rather than a more specific approach. In epistemological terms they encompass the critique of Kantian reason and of the autonomous and rational subject. Naturally, this critique is not accepted by many approaches and researchers. Conversely, most accept that change has taken place in culture and society, increasing uncertainty and blurring the boundary between so-called high culture and low culture, or equivalent boundaries, resulting in diversity of values, perspectives and philosophies. We are familiar with Lyotard s (1993) idea that a shift away from enlightenment and certainty has taken place. Postmodernism is mistrust of metanarratives or great narratives, such as science, or the Enlightenment narrative in general. New information technologies and their application have meant the transformation of knowledge whether it is research knowledge or learning into a significant productive force. In the race of technology, it is no longer a question of what is true, but what works in practice and is efficient.

11 Structuralists make the assumption that societies may be studied as meaning making systems that under the observable surface possess structures that require deeper theoretical scrutiny. Durkheim s thinking is a good example of this. Structuralists always have some subject or centre outside signs, giving meanings to things, whereas certain poststructuralists have abandoned this principle, and thus moved over to postmodernism. 3. Towards a Synthesis? Finally, I would like to argue, that 1. The agenda of contemporary sociology of education is based on the contribution of the classics. They did not, however, dealt with for instance gender and ethnicity. Anyway, more coherent contemporary theories have been largely developed from the corpus of their work. 2. What I have presented above, is a map of theories. I would like to emphasize that a major part of the sociology of education has been only loosely theoretical and more concerned on the problems of policy and practice. 3. The structuration theory of Anthony Giddens (1984) and the theory of fields of Pierre Bourdieu (Bourdieu 1980; Bourdieu & Wacquant 1992) are the most ambitious attempts to resolve the dualisms of sociological theory. Both of them reject the Parsonsian tradition of systems theory and argue for a sociology built on the notion of reflexivity. References Becker, G.S Human Capital. New York: Columbia University Press. Berger, P. & Luckmann, T The Social Construction of Reality. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Blumer Symbolic Interactionism. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bourdieu, P Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P The Logic of Practice. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, P Distinction. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bourdieu, P. & Wacquant, L.C An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Card, B.Y American Educational Sociology from 1890 to Unpublished PhD Thesis. Stanford University. Coleman, J.S. & Fararo, T Rational Choice Theory. Newbury Park: Sage. Collins, R The Credential Society. New York: Academic Press. Delamont, S Interaction in the Classroom. London: Methuen. Demaine, J. (ed.) Sociology of Education Today. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Durkheim, E Education and Sociology. New York: Free Press. Durkheim, E The Division of Labour in Society. New York: Free Press. Durkheim, E The Evolution of Educational Thought. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Durkheim, E Moral Education. New York: Free Press. Durkheim, E The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: Free Press. Durkheim, E The Rules of Sociological Method. New York: Free Press. Gambetta, D Were They Pushed or Did They Jump? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Garfinkel, H Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall. Giddens, A The Constitution of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Giroux, H Theory and Resistance in Education. London: Heinemann.

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