GRAPPLING WITH

MICROSOCIOLOGY AND
MACROSOCIOLOGY
Prepared by: Ma. Anya Yasmin A. Roslin

Outline of Discussion
1. Micro and Macro Perspective
2. Micro and Macro Debate
3. The Movement Toward Micro-Macro
Integration
4. Integrated Social Paradigm (George
Ritzer)
5. Micro-Macro Model (Coleman & Liska)
6. Critique

Micro and Macro

Perspective
1. Macro Perspective : A study of
social structure/institutions within
social structure (status, roles,
institutions) determines human
behavior
- large scale patterns of society
Ex: war, distress of
world
nation,
poverty
environmental deprivation.

third
and

Micro and Macro

Perspective
2. Micro Perspective
- study of social interaction
- human behavior is based on
individuals interpretation of a
situation and the meaning they give
it.
-small scale patterns of social
interaction
Ex. Role of women, the nature of the

Micro and Macro

Perspective
Levels of Analysis

Focus of Analysis

Concentrate on average
action and the regularities
that are common to large
number of social actors

Face-to-Face interaction.
Focus is still on how
individuals interpret the
situation and interact with
other individuals in these
settings.

Macrosociological

Microsociological

Micro-Macro Debate
-Micro & Macro conceptions live next
door to
each other like hostile neighbours,
mostly ignoring and occasionally
picking on each other.
-There has been major conflict
between extreme microscopic and
macroscopic theories

Micro-Macro Debate
MARX:
Interested in the coercive and
alienating effect of capitalist
society on individual workers
WEBER: Concerned with the plight of the
individual system within the iron
cage of a formally rational

society

DURKHEIM:
Concerned with the effect of macrolevel
social facts on individuals and
individual social behaviour

Micro-Macro Debate
A. MACRO EXTREME
1. Parsons CULTURAL DETERMINISM
2. Dahrendorfs CONFLICT THEORY
3. Peter Balus MICROSTRUCTURALISM

B. MICRO EXTREME
1. Blumers STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONALISM
2. George Homans EXCHANGE THEORY
3. ETHNOMETHODOLOGY

Movement Toward Micro-Macro

Integration

-A discern movement away from micromacro extremism and towards a broad

consensus on the focus of integration
or linkage of micro and macro theories.
-Neither micro-nor macro structure are
self-contained levels of analysis, they
interact with each other at all times.

Movement Toward Micro-Macro

Integration

The micro-macro integration problem

revolves around the following
challenge:
a. The micro-researcher doing a study of a
complex organization makes indirect
references to macro-concepts
b. The macro-researcher studying a
complex organization or movements of
historical trends will
make reference to
micro activities but only indirectly.

Movement Toward Micro-Macro

Integration

THE CHALLENGE: To sustain one level

while demonstrating that the other is
an integral part of the discussion of
the findings and the theoretical
propositions advanced.

Movement Toward Micro-Macro

Integration

2 Major strands of work on Micro-Macro

Integration
1. Some theorists focus on integrating
micro and macro theories
2. Others are concerned with developing a
theory that deals with linkage between
micro-macro levels of social analysis.

Movement Toward Micro-Macro

Integration

Micro-Macro Integration as Reflected in

Everyday Setting
-Micro and micro level of analysis are
integrated in everyday setting as a routine
feature of all cultural or social organization
Ex. School, Offices, Hospital, Law Firms

Movement Toward Micro-Macro

Integration
Bureaucracy

SCHOOL
- Evaluate
class
performance &
produce
summary
statement/gra
des at the end
of a specified
period of time

OFFICE
S
- Produces
reports of
routine and
special board
meetings in w/c
a group decides
whether to give
someone a
loan, a grant, or
a fellowship

HOSPIT
AL

LAW
FIRMS

- Patients and
clients are
intertwined
and a medical
history or legal
statement is
prepared that
summarizes
an interview
and
assessment of
tests and

Movement Toward Micro-Macro

Integration

-Everyday setting, therefore, with

highly organized ways of dealings with
producing macro-evaluations, reports
and summarizations of relentless
micro-events.
-In each case, the creation of accounts
that integrate micro-events in such a
way so as to produce macrointerpretations of experience.

Integrated Sociological
Paradigm
Horizontal, Micro-Macro Levels
Forms of
Sociality

Groupings

Social Class

Social
Global
Structure Structure

Vertical Depth
Levels
1. Ecological
2. Organizations
3. Social Patterns
4. Unorganized
Collective
Behaviour
5. Social Roles
6. Collective
Attitudes
7. Social Symbols
8. Creative
Collective
Behaviour
9. Collective Ideas
and
Values
Fig
1. Intersection of Gurvitchs Horizontal and Vertical Levels
10. The Collective

Integrated Sociological
Paradigm
-Gurvitch has a clear sense of both
the micro-macro and objective and
subjective continua but the
complexity of his model makes it
ineffective.
-Ritzers integrated paradigm was
shaped by the work of Abraham Lead
and George Gurvitch.

Integrated Sociological
Paradigm
-According to Ritzer, micro-macro
issue cannot be dealt with apart from
the objective-subject continuum. All
micro and macro social phenomena
are
also
either
objective
or
subjective.

Integrated Sociological
Paradigm
MACROSCOPIC
1. Macro-Objective
Ex. Society, Law,
Bureaucracy,
Technology
and Language

2. Macro-Subjective
Ex. Culture, Norms,
and Values

OBJECTIVE

SUBJECTIVE

3. Micro-Objective
Ex. Patterns of
behaviour, action and
interaction

4. Micro-Subjective
Ex. Perceptions,
beliefs, the various
facts of the social
construction of reality

MICROSCOPIC
Fig 2. Ritzers Major Levels of Social Analysis

Integrated Sociological
Paradigm
Microscopic Macroscopic Dimension
- relate to the magnitude of the social
phenomena ranging from whole societies
to the social acts of the individuals
Objective Subjective Dimension
- refers to t whether the phenomena has
a real, material existence or exists only in
the realm of ideas and knowledge

Integrated Sociological
Paradigm
EXAMPLE OF AN INTEGRATIVE MICRO-MACRO APPROACH
Expressing America: A Critique of the global Credit
Card Society
Definition of Terms:
1. Personal Troubles those problems that affect an
individual and those
immediately around him/her.
2. Public Issues those that affect large numbers of people,
perhaps society as a whole.
- A widespread personal trouble can become a public issue
and a public issue can cause many personal troubles.

Integrated Sociological
Paradigm
Credit Card & Consumer Debt
-Ritzer examined a wide range of personal troubles
and public issues associated with credit cards.
Macro Level:
1)A large and growing number of people are
increasingly indebted to credit card companies
and has become a public issue because of an
accumulated consumer debt.
2)The role of the government played in
encouraging consumer debt by its own tendency
to accumulate debt. As well as credit card
companies in encouraging people to go into debt

Integrated Sociological
Paradigm
Micro Level
1) People have gotten themselves into
debt as a result of the abuses of credit
cards.

Micro-to-Macro Model
Macro
Level

(Capitalist)
Economic
System

(Protestant)
Religious
Doctrine
2

1
Micro
Level

Individual
Values

Fig 3. Colemans Integrative Model

(Orientations
to Economic
Behavior

Micro-to-Macro Model
Coleman uses Webers Protestant Ethic as
an Illustration
Arrow 1 : Macro- Micro Issues
Arrow 2 : Micro-Macro Question
Arrow 3 : Micro-Macro Relationship
Weakness of the Model: Focus only on
the micro-to-macro relationship (Arrow 3)

Micro-to-Macro Model
Macro
Level

(Protestant)
Religious
Doctrine
2

Colemans
Focus

(Capitalist)
Economic
System
3

1
Micro
Level

Individual
Values

Fig 3. Colemans Integrative Model

(Orientations
to Economic
Behavior

Micro-to-Macro Model
Allen Liska (1990) enhanced
Colemans approach by dealing with
both the micro-to-macro and the
macro-to-micro problems. He uses
Protestant Ethic as an example.

Micro-to-Macro Model
Protestantis
m
Macro Level (Religion
System)

(b)

Micro Level

(a)

Capitalism
(Economic
System)

(d)

Individual
Economic
(c)
Values
Behavior
Fig 5. Liskas Macro-to-Micro and Micro-to-Macro Model

Micro-to-Macro Model
3 Schemes to describe Macro Phenomena
1. AGGREGATION: summation of individual properties in
order to yield a group property
2. STRUCTURAL: involves relationships between individuals
within a group
3. GLOBAL: involves what are usually thought of as
emergent properties

CONCLUSION: Macro theorists should do more with

aggregation and micro
theorists do more with contextual factors.

Differences Between Macro and Microsociology

Micro
1. View of
Reality /
Social
Order
2. Subject
Matter

Socially Constructed
Reality

Human thoughts, action

and interaction;
individual way and
methods in making
sense and creating
reality; everyday life

Macro

Objective Social
reality

Large scale structure

and institutions,
social phenomena
and processes, their
influence on groups
and individuals

Differences Between Macro and Microsociology

Micro
3. Views in
Social
Structure
and the
individual

STRUCTURES:
1. social structure (systems &
patterns) is a product of
contingent intentional acts of
freedom
2. social phenomena are
explicable in terms of individuals,
their properties, goals and
beliefs;
3. individual units are
constitutive of larger units,
structures are seem of individual
acts

Macro

STRUCTURES:

1. structures as sui
generis; although
realized through
individual phenomena
and experiences, are
different from them,
external to and coercive
of the individual
2. supervenience of
structure: irreducibility
of structures to
individual who produce
these structures
3. structures as
phenomena and others
as epiphenomena

Differences Between Macro and

Microsociology

4. Causation

Micro

Macro

INDIVIDUAL: : conscious,
creative agent, although
at times may commit
irrational acts

INDIVIDUAL: actor
constrained and
determined by
structure

Not interested in
causality but fine talks of
metaphor of causation

True causation: cause

and effect
relationships to
understand the social
world

(b is the totality of which

a is part, thus b can
influence what a can do)

Efforts in Micro-Macro
Integration
PROBLEMS:
1. Differences in the definition of micro and macro
levels
2. Even if like sounding terms are used in micro
(psychological characteristics, action, behavior,
etc.) macro (structures, systems, culture, etc.),
sociologist differ in defining them.
3. View that terms micro and macro are not
descriptions of empirical realities but are just
analytic concepts to analyze reality

FIGURATIONAL SOCIOLOGY
Background of Norbert Elias
1.A Jew born in Germany, in a middle class
family
2.There was a long delayed recognition of
his work (none of his books was translated
in English. Few English Sociologists were
fluent in German.
3.In the 1970s and throughout the rest of his
life, he received significant awards and he
was involved in an effort to overcome the
micro-macro distinction.

ELIAS: FIGURATION
FIGURATION:
1.Serves as a conceptual tool to loosen
the social constraint to speak and think
as if individual and society were
antagonistic as well as different.
2.Social processes involving the
interweaving of people. They are not
structure that are external and coercive
of relationships between people.
THEY ARE THOSE RELATIONSHIPS.

ELIAS: FIGURATION
-PEOPLE AS INDIVIDUALS at the same time are
thinking of them as SOCIETIES
- It applies both at the macro and micro levels and
to every social phenomena between those two
poles.
CAN BE APPLIED TO:
1. Relatively Small Groups because societies are
made up of interdependent people
Ex. Teachers & Students
Doctors & Patients
They all make up
Children at a nursery school
relatively
comprehensible

ELIAS: FIGURATION
HOWEVER,
2. The longer and more differentiated link
of people would result in figuration that
cannot be perceived directly
Ex. Inhabitants of a Village
City or Nation

ELIAS: FIGURATION
THUS,
Elias refuses to deal with relationship between
individual and society but rather on:
1. Relationship between people perceived as
individuals
2. People perceived as societies

ELIAS: FIGURATION
Elais argues that most Sociologists operate with a
sense of HOMO CLAUS, an image of single human
beings each of whom is ultimately absolutely
interdependent of all other an Individual-inhimself
It should be an image of open, interdependent
actors HOMO APERTI
-The Focus of hi Sociology:
How and why people are bound together to form
specific dynamic figurations is one of the central
question perhaps even the central question of
Sociology.

ELIAS: FIGURATION
-Elias then turn to the various difficulties that have
arisen in Western Civilization to discuss further the
concept of figuration.
However, Elias is not arguing that:
1. Civilization is inherently good nor bad and;
2. To be more civilized is better nor worse
He is simply stating a sociological fact.

The History of Manners

-Historical transformation of a variety of very
mundane behaviors in the direction of a --- civilized
behavior.
-Although he begins with the Middle Ages, he makes
it clear that there is not and cannot be,, such a
thing as starting or ending point for development of
civilization
- He traced the changes in what embarrasses us,
over increasing sensitivity, how we become
observant of others and our sharpened
understanding of others.

The History of Manners

1. BEHAVIOR AT THE TABLE
- Elias examines the book of etiquette written
between the 13th & 19th century regarding table
manners
- His basic point: the threshold of
embarrassment has gradually advanced
Ex. 13th Century poem warned:
a. A gnawed bone should not be put back in the
dish (considered as a serious offense)
b. No poking of fingers into the ears or eyes,
picking of nose while eating.

The History of Manners

16th Century Document:
a. Nothing is more improper than to lick your
fingers, to touch meats and put them into your
mouth with your hand
b. It is also improper to stir sauce with your
fingers or to dip bread into it with your fork and
then suck it.
-The warning implicate the extent of these
behaviors in the 13th to 16th century
- As time goes by, people were more aware that
some behavior are considered uncivilized, then
there is less need to warn them.

The History of Manners

-Elias sees the change in table manners are NOT
made rationally but rather the sources of change
are EMOTIONS than rational thinking.
-Certain form of behavior are placed under
prohibition, not because they are unhealthy but
because they lead to an offensive sight and
disagreeable associations

The History of Manners

2. NATURAL FUNCTIONS
a. The Art of Farting: If it can be purged without
a noise that is best, but it is better that it be emitted
with a noise than it be held back. One should make
sacrifices with the buttocks pressed firmly together.
Let a cough hide the explosive sound: Replace farts
with coughs. (based on 14th C book used by school
children.
- Nowadays, it is no longer necessary to mention the
art of farting because it had come well known that
the behaviors in question were uncivilized.

The History of Manners

-The control over impulses started at the upper
echelons of the court and eventually were
transmitted to those of lower status.
-Further figurational changes are needed when
people are moving closer together such as decrease
in social stratification.
b. Blowing Ones Nose: Do not blow your nose
with the same hand that you use to hold the meat
- in 16th C : Nor is it seemingly, after wiping
you nose, to spread out your handkerchief and peer
into it as if pearls and rubies might have fallen out
of your head

The History of Manners

c. Sexual Relations: In middle ages it was common
that men and women spend the night together in
one room, naked.
(later the custom gradually changed by letting
the couple lie with their clothes but nowadays
wedding bed is concealed without the presence of
any witness.
-Sexual life is taken out of the larger society and
enclosed within the nuclear family
-Civilization involves a CHANGE in the way HUMAN
DRIVES are controlled.

The History of Manners

-The process of civilization of the sex drive, seen
on a large scale runs parallel to those of other
drives, no matter what sociogenetic differences of
detail may always be present.
-Control grows stricter and the instinct is slowly but
progressively suppressed from the public life of
society
- Civilization process in the area of sexuality does
not occur in a straight line; rather, there are many
forward, backward and sideways movements over
time.

The History of Manners

As Elias puts it:
It is cultivated in the individual from an early
age as habitual self-restraint by the structure of
social life. By the pressure of social institutions in
general and by certain executive organs of society.
Thereby, the social commands and prohibitions
become increasingly part of the self.

Power and Civility

If SELF-CONSTRAINT is the key to the civilizing
process then Elias concerned in POWER and
CIVILITY are the CHANGES in SOCIAL CONSTRAINT
that are associated with the rise in SELFRESTRAINT
Power and Civility deals more on the
MACROSCOPIC level:
- The basic tissue resulting from the many single
plans and actions of men can give rise to changes
and patterns that NO individual person has
planned or created.

Lengthening Interdependency Chains

-It is the macro-structural change that is such great
importance to process of civilization.
- Contributes to the corresponding need for the
individuals to moderate their emotions by
developing the habit of connecting events in terms
of chains of cause and effect
- Elias introduced the concept of ROYAL
MECHANISM: wherein the King with absolute status,
as
well
as thethat:
court society emerge as stable
Elias
affirms
central
organs.
- The King
emerges when the appropriate
figurations is in place and not by chance or not by

Lengthening Interdependency Chains

The KINGs COURT
-The place where changes took place that
eventually affected the whole society
Example: The Nobles
- they have longer chains of dependency
that they found it necessary to be sensitive to
others, thus to restraint their own violence, by
the fact that the King is in control over the
means of violence.
- The Monopoly of violence is intimately related
to the ability of the King to monopolize taxation

Lengthening Interdependency Chains

-The rise of the King and the court and the
transition from warrior to courtier represent the
key spurt in the civilizing process.
-The ultimate cause of the decisive changes that
ensued was the change in the entire social
figuration of the time.
a) changes in various relationships among
groups
b) changes in the relationship among
individuals in those
groups.

Gradual Movement toward

a State
-Emergence of the state is brought about by the
presence of private monopoly of arms and taxes.
-There is a DIRECT LINK between the growth of the
King and later:
a) The state controlling agencies in society
b) The development of parallel controlling
agency within the individual
-) As a result self-control grew more continuous
and stable.

Thank you for listening. =)

Grappling with Macro sociology and Micro sociology