After reading Chapter Four, you should be able to:
- Define society.
- Explain how Lenski uses technological development as a criterion for classifying societies at different levels of evolutionary development and identify five types of societies according to their technology.
- Summarize how technology shapes societies at different stages of sociological evolution.
- Explain the central role of social conflict in Marx’s theory.
- Outline Karl Marx’s model of society.
- Explain Marx’s analysis of conflict throughout history.
- Cite Marx’s ways in which capitalism alienates workers.
- Explain Weber’s notion of ideal types.
- Examine how Weber used the concept of the rationalization of society as a means of understanding and interpreting historical change.
- Identify seven characteristics of a rational social organization.
- Define Durkheim’s concepts of structure by function and personality.
- Explain Durkheim’s idea of how an expansion in a society’s division of labor promotes a shift from mechanical to organic solidarity.
- Identify major similarities and differences among the analyses of society developed by Lenski, Marx, Weber, and Durkheim.
