Encyclopedia of SociologyVol._3

of Alan Kerckoff and Keith Davis (1962). Kerckoff and Davis found empirical support that individuals, having met through the channels of propinquity and endogamy, proceed through a series of stages or steps in the development of the relationship. According to their theory, social status variables such as social class and race operate early on in the relationship to bring people together. The next stage involved the consensus of values, during which time the couple determines the degree of similarity in their value orientations. Couples who share similar values are likely to continue to the third stage, need complementarity. However, the data collected by Kerckoff and Davis offered only weak support for need complementarity as part of the process of mate selection.

Development of process theories of mate selection continued into the 1970s and is exemplified in the work of Ira Reiss (1960), Bernard Murstein (1970), Robert Lewis (1973), and R. Centers (1975). While these theoretical perspectives differ in terms of the order and nature of the stages, they have much in common. Melding these theories of mate selection, the following assumptions can be made concerning the stages of dyad formation that lead to marriage:

1.There are predictable trajectories or stages of dyadic interaction that lead to marriage.

2.The social and cultural background of a couple provides the context for the interpersonal processes.

3.Value similarity leads to rapport in communication, self-disclosure, and the development of trust.

4.Attraction and interaction depend on the exchange value of the assets and liabilities that the individuals bring to the relationship.

5.Conditional factors such as age, gender, or marital history may influence the order or duration of the stages, or the probability that the relationship will end in marriage.

All the studies of the mate selection process have struggled with methodological difficulties. Most studies have relied on small, volunteer samples of couples. Most have used college-age, nevermarried couples. Finally, most studies have made extensive use of retrospection in assessing the

process of dyad formation rather than collecting longitudinal data. These methodological difficulties may, in part, account for the recent decline in the number of studies examining the process of mate selection.

Furthermore, these stages may or may not result in marriage, but the primary focus of the research is on relationships that endure or terminate in marriage. Therefore, relatively little is known about the mate selection process as it pertains to rejection of a potential mate or how such terminations of relationships affect subsequent mate selection processes.

More current research has begun to shift away from antecedents that lead to legal marriage and turn instead to disentangling the trajectory of relationship development over the life course. More attention will turn to the formation and development of interpersonal relationships that may move through stages of romance, cohabitation, friendship, marriage, divorce, and so forth. Emphasis on relationship quality and durability, gender role negotiations, commitment processes, and romantic love have recently taken on increased importance in social science studies of mate selection (Surra and Hughes 1997; Houts et al. 1996; Surra 1990).

Many of the theories have also overlooked the influence of peer groups and family members in the mate selection process. The theoretical and empirical inquiry that has paid attention to peer and kin influences is restricted to studies of dating. Unfortunately, studies of dating and studies of mate selection have not been sufficiently integrated to provide the field with adequate data concerning the interrelationships between dating and mate selection processes.

Yet another area of research that has the potential for contribution to further understanding of the mate selection process is studies of romantic love. Process theories of mate selection seldom examine love as the basis, or even as a stage, in the development of a heterosexual relationship. While there is a large body of empirical and theoretical work on romantic love, conceptually the studies of love have been treated as quite distinct from the research on mate selection. Contrary to popular opinion, the relationship between love and marriage is not well understood.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

As the family system changes in American society, so too the direction of research on mate selection shifts. As more couples delay first marriage, examination of courtship cohabitation becomes more salient. Future studies of courtship cohabitation will most likely examine the association between increasing rates of cohabitation and decreasing rates of marriage. On the individual level, the effects of the cohabitation experience on the decision to marry also warrant attention.

Research is just beginning on the mate selection process of remarriage (Bulcroft et al. 1989; Rodgers and Conrad 1986; Spanier and Glick 1980). While some factors that predict first marriage may remain constant in remarriage, such as endogamy and propinquity, other factors may come into play in remarriage. For example, age homogeneity may be less of a factor in remarriage since the pool of eligible mates is impacted by sex ratio imbalance. The exchange relationship in the mate selection process also differs in remarriage, since presence of children, prior marital history, and the economic liabilities of child support and alimony bring new dimensions to considerations of remarriage. Of particular interest are barriers to remarriage in the middle and later years of the life cycle, such that cohabitation or serious dating may offer more long-term rewards to the couple than legal marriage might provide. Thus, the strong profamilial norms that encourage the younger members of society to marry dissipate at mid and later life. Low rates of remarriage for individuals over the age of 50, in part, indicate that societal pressure to marry is greatly reduced.

Last, it has generally been assumed that homogamy of background characteristics leads to similarity of values, shared marital role expectations, rapport, and intimacy in the process of mate selection. But due to changing gender role expectations, this assumption may no longer be valid. As a result, more attention needs to be given to the process of role negotiation as part of the mate selection process.

In summary, studies of mate selection began with understanding the correlates of mate selection. Social scientists began by studying demographic data on homogamy in religion, social class, age, and other factors as these variables related to who married whom. For a brief period in the

1960s through the early 1980s, attention was turned to theories and data that examined the process of mate selection. Current research in the 1990s has not abandoned the study of the correlates and theories of mate selection, but as the nature of the family system changes, researchers have begun to consider that the generalizability of theories and findings may be limited when a researcher is trying to explain mate selection at a point later than young adulthood. Recent studies on the courtship processes of divorced (O’Flaherty and Workman 1988) and later life mate selection (Veevers 1988) point to the future focus of theories and research on mate selection processes.

REFERENCES

Beck, Ulrich, and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim 1995 The Normal Chaos of Love. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.

Bernard, Jessie 1982 The Future of Marriage. New York: Columbia University Press.

Besharov, D., and T. Sullivan 1996 ‘‘Welfare-Reform and Marriage.’’ Public Interest 125:81–94.

Blau, Peter, Terry Blum, and Joseph Schwartz 1982 ‘‘Heterogeneity and Intermarriage.’’ American Sociological Review 47:45–62.

Bossard, James 1932 ‘‘Residential Propinquity as a Factor in Marriage Selection.’’ American Journal of Sociology 38:219–224.

Bulcroft, Kris, Richard Bulcroft, Laurie Hatch, and Edgar F. Borgatta 1989 ‘‘Antecedents and Consequences of Remarriage in Later Life.’’ Research on Aging 11:82–106.

Bulcroft, Richard, and Kris Bulcroft 1993 ‘‘Race Differences in Attitudinal and Motivational Factors in the Decision to Marry.’’ Journal of Marriage and the Family

55:338–355.

Centers, Richard 1975 Sexual Attraction and Love: An Instrumental Theory. Springfield, Ill.: C. C. Thomas.

Guttentag, M., and P. Secord 1983 Too Many Women? Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage.

Houts, Renate, Elliot Robins, and Ted Houston 1996 ‘‘Compatibility and Development of Premarital Relationships.’’ Journal of Marriage and the Family 58:7–20.

Kerckoff, Alan, and Keith Davis 1962 ‘‘Value Consensus and Need Complementarity in Mate Selection.’’ American Sociological Review 27:295–303.

Lewis, Robert 1973 ‘‘A Longitudinal Test of a Developmental Framework for Premarital Dyadic Formation.’’ Journal of Marriage and the Family 35:16–27.

Mindel, Charles, Robert Haberstein, and Roosevelt Wright 1988 Ethnic Families in America: Patterns and Variations. 3rd ed., New York: Elsevier North Holland.

Murstein, Bernard 1974 Love, Sex, and Marriage through the Ages. New York: Springer.

——— 1976 Who Will Marry Whom? Theories and Research in Marital Choice. New York: Springer.

O’Flaherty, Kathleen, and Laura E. Workman 1988 ‘‘Courtship Behavior of the Remarried.’’ Journal of Marriage and the Family 50:499–506.

Reiss, Ira 1960 ‘‘Toward a Sociology of the Heterosexual Love Relationship.’’ Marriage and Family Living

22:139–145.

Rodgers, Roy, and Linda Conrad 1986 ‘‘Courtship for Remarriage: Influences on Family Reorganization after Divorce.’’ Journal of Marriage and the Family

48:767–775.

Schoen, Robert, and John Wooldredge 1989 ‘‘Marriage Choices in North Carolina and Virginia 1969–71 and 1979–81.’’ Journal of Marriage and the Family 51:465–481.

Spanier, Graham, and Paul Glick 1980 ‘‘Paths to Remarriage.’’ Journal of Divorce 3:283–298.

Surra, Catherine 1990 ‘‘Research and Theory on Mate Selection and Premarital Relationships in the 1980s.’’

Journal of Marriage and the Family 52:844–856.

———, and Debra Hughes 1997 ‘‘Commitment Processes in Accounts of the Development of Premarital Relationships.’’ Journal of Marriage and the Family 59:5–21.

Takagi, Diana 1994 ‘‘Japanese American Families.’’ In R. L. Taylor, ed., Minority Families in the United States: A Multicultural Perspective. Engelwood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

U.S. Bureau of the Census 1986 Statistical Abstract of the United States. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.

Veevers, Jean 1988 ‘‘The ‘Real’ Marriage Squeeze: Mate Selection Mortality and the Marriage Gradient.’’ Sociological Perspectives 31:169–189.

Waite, L., and G. Spitze 1981 ‘‘Young Women’s Transition to Marriage.’’ Demography 18:681–694.

Winch, Robert 1958 Mate Selection: A Study of Complementary Needs. New York: Harper and Row.

Yellowbird, Michael, and C. Matthew Snipp 1994 ‘‘American Indian Families.’’ In R. L. Taylor, ed., Minority Families in the United States: A Multicultural Perspective. Engelwood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

KRIS BULCROFT

MATERIALISM

Materialism posits the epistemological primacy of matter over ideas, mind, values, spirit, and other incorporeal phenomena. Philosophical perspectives stressing the fundamental importance of physical conditions and needs have grown more elaborate with the increasing differentiation and autonomy of secular knowledge from religion. Materialists oppose magical, religious, and metaphysical explanations of worldly affairs, criticizing their role as mystifications and socioeconomic or political legitimations. The enduring debate over materialism and idealism (which gives primacy to ideas) centers on the two approaches’ relative effectiveness as guides to scientific, technical, and sociopolitical practices. In social science, materialism refers to often tacit metatheories, or heuristic devices, which frame distinctive types of research problems, hypotheses, concepts, and theories stressing the causal force of physical realities on sociocultural matters.

Two contrasting threads of the materialist tradition have divergent consequences for the behavioral and social sciences. Reductionists posit that phenomena are determined strictly by physical causes. Their view that existential knowledge is a reflection of corporeal conditions denies the autonomy of psychological and sociocultural factors and, thus, suggests that the behavioral and social sciences have no distinct content. Nonreductionists hold that psychological and sociocultural phenomena arise from and are dependent upon physical substrata. They also accord ‘‘primacy’’ to physical realities and corporeal impulses, motives, values, representations, and interests, seeing them as basic constraints that ‘‘determine,’’ or channel, the direction of human practices. By contrast to reductionists, however, they treat the sociocultural realm as an ‘‘emergent,’’ ‘‘sui generis,’’ ‘‘relatively autonomous’’ domain having distinct properties, processes, and laws and exerting reciprocal causality with the material realm. Implying interpenetrating sociocultural and material spheres, they include socially constituted entities and processes (e.g., technology and labor) as prime ‘‘material’’ determinants.

Modern materialism is rooted in ancient Greek conceptions of elementary bodies. Atomistic philosophers held that all existing things are composed of indivisible, ultimate objects of the same

material in perpetual motion in empty space. They argued that perceptible objects derive from atoms of various sizes and shapes colliding, getting entangled, and forming different combinations, and that sensations arise from atoms passing through the sense organs and impacting on the soul (also composed of atoms). From the start, materialists considered knowledge to be a ‘‘subjective’’ manifestation of ‘‘objective’’ reality, holding that physical realities ultimately determine individual experiences and sociocultural constructions. However, claims about the scope of this determination varied widely with the degree to which the thinker adhered to reductionist or nonreductionist presuppositions.

Atomistic materialism reemerged as a major cultural force during the Renaissance science revolution. Galileo and Newton again portrayed physical reality as ultimate particles moving in empty space, but their distinction between precisely measurable, primary sensory qualities (i.e., length, width, weight, figure) and nonmathematizable secondary qualities (e.g., color, smell, taste, texture) established a sharp boundary between objective and subjective experience and decisive methodological standard for distinguishing science from metaphysical, aesthetic, or sociocultural thought. The capacity of diverse observers, employing the same experimental techniques, to arrive at similar findings supported materialist claims about the primacy of the physical world and certainty of objective knowledge.

The extraordinary success of Newtonian science contributed greatly to an extensive secularization of knowledge that reduced barriers to materialist approaches in human affairs. For example, Hobbes argued that social actions are also effects of matter in motion; material primacy is manifested in the dominant drive for self-preservation, all-pervasive power struggles, and subsequent need for absolute monarchy. Locke’s Newtonian theory of mind held that primary sense qualities reflect external objects and that complex ideas merely combine the simple ones received directly from sense experience. However, Descartes’ dualistic vision of a materialist physical world and an autonomous mind blessed with innate ideas of divine origin exemplifies the seventeenth century tendency to provide separate grounds for science, which avert direct subversion of religion. The power of the Roman Catholic Church and its censors, who saw

materialism as a subversive force, was already inscribed powerfully in the earlier trial and conviction of Galileo and in his concession to dualism. Even Hobbes left space for spiritual realities. The strong subjectivist currents and subject-object dualism in Western philosophy derived from its earlier religious roots and its lack of autonomy in relation to the Church.

Enlightenment thinkers fashioned a new cultural space for free inquiry and autonomous science, subverting the power of religion and paving the way for modern materialism. La Mettrie, D’Holbach, and Diderot held that all experience has material causes. Idealizing Newtonian mechanics, the philosophes believed that naturalistic explanation of all phenomena would demystify religious and metaphysical superstition, limit the rule of the Church and nobility, and animate scientifically guided social reform. Revolutionary advances in eighteenth-century medicine, chemistry, and biology upheld their faith in materially based rationality, disenchantment, and progress. The later social revolutions against the ancien régime, secularization of political power, and gradual rise of liberal democracy favored the spread of materialist thinking in new social domains.

Manifesting Enlightenment culture, Karl Marx set the agenda for modern materialism. Even today’s debates about the topic center on different interpretations of his work. Following Feuerbach, Marx charged that religion and its secular, idealist substitutes (e.g., Hegelian philosophy) are ‘‘inverted,’’ or ‘‘alienated,’’ projections of human capacities and potentialities. As ‘‘natural beings,’’ he argued, people must satisfy their needs by appropriating and shaping physical objects. Although he attacked Hegel’s speculative history of ‘‘spirit,’’ Marx retained his view that people create themselves and their societies through their labor. Young Marx called for a ‘‘true’’ materialism, or a new science of humanity focusing on ‘‘social relationships.’’ He wanted to illuminate ideologically obscured forms of socially structured production and exploitation, which, in his view, constitute the ‘‘real history’’ of ‘‘corporeal’’ human beings.

Divergent strains of Marxian materialism— ‘‘dialectical materialism’’ and ‘‘historical material- ism’’—are rooted ultimately in tensions between the political and scientific sides of Marx’s and

Engels’ works. The terms were coined after Marx’s death and codified into a variety of schematic orthodoxies. Dialectical materialism is a philosophy of nature developed first by Engels, elaborated by Plekhanov and Lenin, and fashioned by MarxistLeninists into an eschatology of the communist movement. Serving primarily as a political ideology and metalanguage that justified communist states and insurgencies, it did not have much impact on social science outside the communist regimes and movements. By contrast, historical materialism, Marx’s main metatheory of social development, has much relevance for sociology. Yet even this approach was stated variously by him, and gave rise to conflicting interpretations. The elder Engels ([1890–1894] 1959, pp. 395–400), who earlier helped Marx frame his theories, berated first-generation ‘‘Marxists’’ for using materialism ‘‘as an excuse for not studying history,’’ or as a dogmatic Hegelian ‘‘lever for construction,’’ instead of as ‘‘a guide to study.’’ Accepting partial responsibility for the later vulgar interpretations, he admitted that Marx and he, in the heat of political battle, often spoke with too much certainty. However, he insisted that Marx and he opposed the idea of all-encompassing, mechanistic causality by narrowly conceived economic factors and that their materialism meant nothing more than that ‘‘the production and reproduction of real life’’ is ‘‘the ultimately determining element in history.’’

Engels implied a problematic split in Marx’s thought. On the one hand, Marx sometimes implied, in Hegelian fashion, progressively unfolding stages of history, animated by relentless technological advance and ever more unified classes rationally taking account of material factors, controlling them, and speeding history to an ‘‘inevitable’’ emancipatory conclusion. Such points were warranties for his political program. On the other hand, the scientific side of Marx’s work breaks from teleological thinking. His historical materialism stresses empirical inquiry about specific material conditions and practices and their sociocultural consequences among particular groups in finite space and time, and calls for reconstruction of theory and practice in light of the findings. This approach has more affinity for the empirical and secular thrust of the Darwinian revolution than for earlier Enlightenment ideas of progress and science, which implied a new faith or civil religion. After the failed revolutions of 1848 and the rise of

the new Napoleonic dictatorship in France, Marx qualified his formerly highly optimistic views about ‘‘making history,’’ holding that we do not make it in accord with circumstances or outcomes that we freely choose. This insight was precursory to his mature work on capitalism, which, although retaining certain Hegelian taints, manifested clearly his historical materialism.

Following Adam Smith, Marx held that a specialized division of labor enhances productive powers geometrically. However, by contrast to Smith, he specified that capitalism’s exceptional productivity derives expressly from its historically specific forms of complex cooperation, which end the relative isolation of peasants and other independent producers. Marx charged that economists mystify this process by obscuring the fundamental role of labor and portraying capitalist growth as if it were animated by a ‘‘fantastic . . . relation between things,’’ rather than by a specific type of ‘‘social relation’’ (Marx [1887] 1967, pp. 71–83). He saw the unequal relationship between capitalists and workers as the ‘‘secret’’ of capitalist accumulation. Treating associated labor and related forms of social organization, extraction, and domination as the decisive ‘‘material’’ forces in human affairs, Marx averted the reductionist physicalism of the early atomists, awkward dualism of the Renaissance thinkers, and mechanistic determinism of the dialectical materialists.

Marx and Engels ([1845–1846] 1964, pp. 31– 32) said that the ‘‘first premise of all human history’’ is the production of ‘‘the means of subsistence’’ and a characteristic ‘‘mode of life.’’ As productive forces are refined, they held, growing surpluses offer provision beyond subsistence and allow certain individuals and strata to be freed from direct production for other activities, including the creation of fresh technical knowledge and new productive forces. Marx and Engels contended that incremental advances in production generate increasingly elaborate socio-cultural differentiation, class structure, and domination and more universal ‘‘class struggles’’ over the productive forces. In their view, material determination in the ‘‘last instance’’ means that socially structured patterns of production, extraction, and disposition of surplus shape social development. A materialist sociology focuses on these processes and their consequences.

The central tenet of historical materialism is that the ‘‘base,’’ or ‘‘mode of production,’’ determines ‘‘superstructure,’’ or ‘‘the forms of intercourse.’’ The base is composed of ‘‘productive forces,’’ which contribute directly to production for material needs (i.e., natural resources, tools, technical knowledge, labor power, and modes of cooperation), and ‘‘property relations,’’ which provide certain ‘‘classes’’ effective control over production and relegate others to direct labor. ‘‘Superstructure’’ is composed of nonproductive types of social intercourse (i.e., noneconomic forms of public organization, private association, and thought), which are determined by and, in turn, maintain, or reproduce, the base.

There is a core technological root to Marx’s materialism, but he also implied reciprocal causality between the physical and sociocultural realms. Thus, he was not a reductionist. Although granting productive forces ultimate theoretical primacy, his historical analyses dwelled more on property relations and class dynamics. Moreover, he did not hold that material determination operated with the same intensity throughout society. Rather, he emphasized that its strongest force is exerted in institutions that play a direct role in reproducing the mode of production and that the rest of society and culture has much more autonomy. For example, under capitalism, mainstream public discourses about property rights or free trade are central to ideology, but most music and fiction, as well as Marx’s critical writings, bear only the broad imprint of the level and form of productive development. Marx envisioned society as composed of interdependent social structures and cultural forms, implying that each element has a distinct impact on the whole. Yet he still saw the base as the most decisive factor shaping overall society and its internal relations. He treated the productive activities of subordinate producers and surplus extraction by superordinate classes as the most central and obscured processes in social life and the root of the most major institutions, conflicts, and transitions.

In a much-debated argument about the capitalist mode of production, Marx held that the rate of profit would fall under highly mechanized production. He believed that the trend toward automation in heavy industry reduces the proportion of direct laborers to fixed capital, diminishing the ultimate source of capitalist profit and requiring hyperexploitation of remaining workers to pay for

vastly increased technical investment. Marx argued that the classes would be compressed into a tiny monopoly stratum of owners and a huge impoverished mass of de-skilled workers and permanently unemployed people. However, he also held that science and technology, having replaced direct labor as the leading productive force, would provide the material basis for proletarian revolution and an emancipated, postcapitalist order (i.e., scientific production and administration, greatly reduced work and material necessity, and uncoerced cooperation). This hopeful scenario about collective agency and planning as replacing blind history, and material determinism as becoming truly ‘‘in the last instance,’’ went beyond the scientific thrust of historical materialism and reflected the Hegelian residue in his thought.

By the early twentieth century, pathbreaking ideas about electromagnetic fields, relativity theory, and quantum mechanics relativized space and time, eroded the borders between energy and mass, and fashioned a new relational cosmology that undermined Newtonianism. Similarly, Nietzsche, James, Dewey, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein subverted the foundations of modern Western philosophy. Major social changes accompanied the intellectual shifts. A more complex system of classes and subclasses, new types of workplaces, indirect forms of ownership and control, and state intervention altered the structure of capitalism and blurred the line between base and superstructure. Stalinism; fascism; resurgent irrationalism; and persistent racial, ethnic, gender, and religious splits also cried out for new types of theory. In this climate, Marxists tended to drift toward new types of cultural theory or to embrace dialectical materialism, which remained the official ideology of global communism.

In the 1930s, when sociology was being transformed into a professionally specialized discipline in the United States, Talcott Parsons relegated Marx to the status of a footnote in the history of social theory and gave a strong primacy to values and ideas that turned Marx on his head. Parsons’s leading role in post–World War II sociology helped harden mainstream opposition to materialism. Claiming that class was no longer a prime basis of association, a determinant of political and cultural beliefs, or a source of major social conflicts, numerous North American sociologists and many

thinkers from other liberal democracies argued that materialism did not come to terms with the nascent ‘‘postindustrial society.’’ Although certain critics dissented, most mainstream sociologists dismissed materialism as a crude ideology, or simply ignored the approach.

Materialist themes appeared much more prominently in later 1960s social theory, animated, in part, by New Left attacks on functionalism and positivism. Very influential among European theorists, Lewis Althusser’s ‘‘structuralist’’ interpretation of Marx radically revised materialism. However, G. A. Cohen’s Karl Marx’s Theory of History (1978) helped stimulate wider efforts to reconstruct historical materialism (e.g., Anderson 1974a, 1974b; Shaw 1978; McMurtry 1978; Roemer 1982; Bhaskar 1989). Dispensing with overt political facets and overcoming conceptual gaps, the new works were more systematic versions of the original approach. However, they did not have much impact on mainstream sociology.

Materialist theory fell on hard times in a climate where ‘‘post-materialist’’ identity politics were ascendent over labor-centered or class politics, and failed communism and resurgent neoliberalism seemed to doom the socialist ‘‘alternative’’ (Anderson 1983; Antonio 1990). In this climate, a new ‘‘cultural sociology’’ blossomed as part of a broader interdisciplinary turn to ‘‘representation’’ and ‘‘discourse.’’ Postmodern arguments about the primacy of culture were often pitched directly against Marxian materialism, which they declared moribund. These new cultural theories tended to shift the focus among ‘‘critical sociologists’’ from ‘‘structural determinants’’ (i.e., production and labor) to ‘‘cultural surfaces,’’ especially mass entertainment and other signifiers of mass consumption. Many of these theorists argued that a defining feature of postmodern culture is its increased, or, even, total autonomy from material underpinnings.

Although materialist theory has declined in recent years, historical-comparative and empirical work, manifesting tacit materialism and clear connections to nondoctrinaire forms of Marxism, was well established in North American sociology by the 1980s. It still flourishes among significant subgroups in the discipline. These thinkers do not directly employ the base-superstructure model

(which is now associated with dialectical materialism and dogmatic Marxism), but they share historical materialist presuppositions, albeit often fused with other traditions. Recent historical changes are intensifying interest in materialist themes. First, neoliberal globalization and restructuring stimulate heated debates over multinational firms, international finance, socioeconomic dislocations, and related public policy initiatives. Second, the collapse of eastern European communism and global decline of communism raise major questions about socioeconomic reconstruction in postcommunist society and detach materialism from communist politics. Third, new materialist critiques counter claims about the primacy of culture and representation in interdisciplinary theory circles. Historical materialism is a heuristic device that poses problems and hypotheses, and is perhaps best judged on this account. Consider the current ‘‘materialist’’ issues below.

MATERIALIST ANALYSES OF THE NEW

PHASE OF CAPITALISM

As in Marx’s time, today’s materialism arises in a climate of perceived rupture, or the end of the post–World War II socioeconomic system and its distinctive patterns of growth, regulation, and geopolitics. Materialists focus on the shifts in the system of production and their impacts on other aspects of social life, especially on inequality, conflict, and politics.

Globalization and Restructuring. Recent materialist work focuses on the new ‘‘flexible’’ forms of production, network firms, international division of labor, and multinational economic blocs— for example, the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) and the European Union (EU). The core debates among these analysts concern the shape, permanence, and consequences of the new global economy and the degree to which it departs from postwar capitalism (i.e., they ask whether a new multinational, or ‘‘post-Fordist,’’ phase of capitalism has replaced ‘‘Fordism,’’ or simply modified it.) (e.g., Harvey 1989; Harrison 1994; Gordon 1996).

Income and Wealth Inequality. Neoliberal deregulation, free trade, and recommodification of public goods have increased global disparities

of wealth, income, jobs, and life chances (Braun 1997; Davis 1992). Inequality is most extreme between the richest and the poorest nations, but it has also grown considerably within societies, including wealthy ones, such as the United States. Materialists debate the scope of economic inequality, its relation to global restructuring, and its consequences.

Class, Labor, and Politics. Materialists also focus on the impact of restructuring and polarizing labor markets on organized labor. For example, they ask: Are new types of unions arising among formerly unorganized low-wage service workers and professional groups? Will transnational labor organizations arise in the emergent economic blocs? Are new fusions of class politics and cultural politics arising?

The State. Materialists raise questions about the impact of capital mobility and new forms of international financial and labor markets on the state’s capacity to protect and regulate its various environments and maintain public goods (e.g., health, education, welfare, retirement). They also study the role of the state’s police and military arms in the global political economy.

Environmental Issues and Sustainability. Increasing threats of resource depletion, global warming, hazardous waste, and overall environmental destruction, the need for alternative forms of energy and technologies, and the communist regimes’ dismal environmental records have stimulated sharp criticism of earlier materialism’s ‘‘productivism’’ and inattention to the costs, risks, and limits of growth. They pose questions about sustainable growth and material limits to political aspirations.

Communication and Information Technologies. These industries play a major role in globalization and restructuring and, thus, are a central focus in fresh materialist inquiries.

FOUNDATIONAL ISSUES IN

MATERIALIST THEORY

Although certain thinkers (e.g., Wallerstein 1991; Postone 1993; Wood 1995; Wright 1997) have begun reframing materialism in light of the recent historical changes, more fundamental rethinking

of the tradition is likely, especially in the two broad areas discussed below.

The Role of Technology. This area has long been a central focus of materialism. In the late nineteenth century, Marx held that science and technical knowledge were already becoming the primary productive force, altering fundamentally the capitalist mode of production and materialist dynamics of all preceding epochs. Certain contemporary theorists argue that information and communication technologies are giving rise to an ‘‘informational society’’ (e.g., Poster 1990; Castells 1996). These thinkers raise basic questions about previous ideas of production, property, labor, organization, and other aspects of earlier materialism, which could lead to a new generation of theories framed around a knowledge-driven logic of material development.

Materialism and Politics. The effort to unify theory and practice, and the consequent fusion of science and politics, generate distinct resources (i.e., they provide a ‘‘critical’’ thrust) as well as major sources of tension (i.e., between science and ideology) in Marxian materialism. As ‘‘critical theorists,’’ materialists focus on the contradictions between democratic ideology’s claims about freedom, equality, abundance, and participation, on the one hand, and actual conditions of capitalist and state socialist societies, on the other. They claim to illuminate the determinate, historical possibilities for progressive social change (i.e., ‘‘emancipatory’’ structural factors, cultural conditions, and social movements), which favor reconstructing modern societies according to revised versions of their own democratic ideals. However, the failure of proletarian revolution and communism have blurred materialist political aims. Some materialists abandon critical theory completely, fashioning a strictly empirical sociology, while others substitute highly generalized ideals of ‘‘discursive’’ or ‘‘radical’’ democracy and cultural politics for socialism. It is hard to predict the fate of critical theory, but increasing inequalities in wealth, polarizing labor markets, and declining social benefits raise major questions about unmet needs and the material bases of inclusive democratic citizenship. The bankruptcy of soviet-style regimes and the erosion of social democracies make materialist political goals an open question, but the consequent loss of certainty undercuts the tradition’s

dogmatic side and increases chances for theoretical reconstruction and restored vitality.

REFERENCES

Anderson, Perry 1974b Lineages of the Absolutist State. London: New Left Books.

———1974a Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism. London: New Left Books.

———1983 In the Tracks of Historical Materialism. London: New Left Books.

Antonio, Robert 1990 ‘‘The Decline of the Grand Narrative of Emancipatory Modernity: Crisis or Renewal in Neo-Marxian Theory?’’ In George Ritzer, ed., Frontiers of Social Theory: The New Syntheses. New York: Columbia University Press.

Bhaskar, Roy 1989 Reclaiming Reality. London: New

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Postone, Moishe 1993 Time, Labor, and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx’s Critical Theory. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Roemer, John E. 1982 A General Theory of Exploitation and Class. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Shaw, William H. 1978 Marx’s Theory of History. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.

Wallerstein, Immanuel 1991 Unthinking Social Science:

The Limits of Nineteenth-Century Paradigms. Cambridge,

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Wood, Ellen Meiksins 1995 Democracy Against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Wright, Erik Olin 1997 Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis. New York: Cambridge University Press.

ROBERT J. ANTONIO

Braun, Denny 1997 The Rich Get Richer: The Rise of Income Inequality in the United States and the World, 2nd ed. Chicago: Nelson-Hall Publishers.

Castells, Manuel 1996 The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture: Vol. 1: The Rise of Network Society. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.

Cohen, G. A. 1978 Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Davis, Mike 1992 City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. New York: Vintage Books.

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Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Basic Writings on Politics and Philosophy. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books.

Gordon, David M. 1996 Fat and Mean: The Corporate Squeeze of Working Americans and the Myth of Managerial ‘‘Downsizing.’’ New York: Free Press.

Harrison, Bennett 1994 Lean and Mean: The Changing Landscape of Corporate Power in the Age of Flexibility. New York: Basic Books.

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Poster, Mark 1990 The Mode of Information: Poststructuralism and Social Context. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

MATHEMATICAL SOCIOLOGY

Mathematical sociology means the use of mathematics for formulating sociological theory more precisely than can be done by less formal methods. The term thus refers to an approach to theory construction rather than to a substantive field of research or a methodology of data collection or analysis; it is also not the same as statistical methods, although it is closely related. Mathematical sociology uses a variety of mathematical techniques and applies to a variety of different substantive research fields, both micro and macro.

Theory involves abstraction from and codification of reality; formulation of general principles describing what has been abstracted; and deduction of consequences of those formulations for the sake of understanding, predicting, and possibly controlling that reality. When social phenomena can be described in mathematical terms, the deductive power of mathematics enables more precise and more detailed derivations and predictions based on original premises.

Mathematical expression also enables sociologists to discover that the same abstract forms and processes sometimes describe what seem to be diverse social phenomena. If the same type of formulation describes both the spread of a disease and the adoption of an innovation, then a common type of process is involved and the theorist

can search further for what generates that commonality. Ideally, therefore, mathematics provides the basis for very general and powerful integrative theory.

The vigor of mathematical sociology varies widely over the different subfields of sociology. Precise formulation requires precise observations and careful induction of general patterns from those observations. Some sociologists have rejected any attempts to quantify human behavior, either on the grounds that what is important is in principle not subject to precise measurement or from a philosophical unwillingness to consider human behavior to be in any way deterministic. That issue will not be addressed here, but clearly it is much easier to obtain precise information in some areas of inquiry than in others. For example, census data provide reasonably precise counts of many sociological interesting facts, with the consequence that mathematical demography has long flourished.

Mathematics can be thought of as an elegant logic machine. Application of mathematics to any substantive discipline involves careful translation of the substantive ideas into mathematical form, deriving the mathematical consequences, and translating the results back into a substantive interpretation. There are three key aspects to the process:

(1) finding a satisfactory way of expressing the substantive ideas in mathematical terms, (2) being able to solve the mathematical puzzle, and (3) eventually being able to compare derivations from the model with data from the substantive application.

The mathematical expression of a substantive theory is called a model. Often, models are created with primary emphasis on their being tractable, or readily solved. Some types of models appear frequently in substantive literature because they are widely known, are relatively simple mathematically, and have easy solutions. Basic models and applications can be found in Coleman (1964), Fararo (1973), and Leik and Meeker (1975). Mathematics and sociological theory are discussed in Fararo (1984). A wealth of more complex models can be found in specialized volumes and in periodicals such as the Journal of Mathematical Sociology.

Simple models have the advantage of presenting an uncluttered view of the world, although derivations from such models often do not fit

observed data very well. When the goal is heuristic, a simple model might be preferable to one that matches more closely the reality being modeled. However, when the goal is accurate prediction and possible control, then more complex models are typically needed.

There are two general questions to be raised in deciding whether developing a mathematical model has been useful. One is whether the mathematics of the model lead to new ideas about how the system being modeled operates. This is purely a theoretical question, concerned with understanding reality better by creating an abstraction of it that enables us to think more clearly about it. The second question concerns how well the model fits that reality, and is a statistical question.

Statistical models are concerned solely with fitting an underlying mathematical model to data from a sample of real-world cases. The underlying model may be complex or simple, but the statistical concerns are whether the sample can be assumed to represent adequately the population from which it was selected and whether the parameter (equation constant) estimates based on that sample can be considered accurate reflections of how the variables of the underlying model are related in that population.

A HISTORY OF RECENT APPROACHES TO

FORMAL THEORY

During much of this century, there has been concern in sociology over the relationship between theory and research. Whereas theory was abstract and typically discursive, research increasingly employed statistical methods. The gulf between verbal statements about theoretical relationships and statistical tests of empirical patterns was great. Beginning in midcentury, some sociologists suggested that one way to bridge this gulf is to translate theoretical ideas into mathematics. Proposals for ways that theoretical ideas could be represented mathematically included those by Simon (1957) and several summarized by Berger et al. (1962).

Another approach to more formal presentation of theories that seemed to offer a bridge over the chasm between verbal statements and statistical tests was Zetterberg’s concept of axiomatic theory (1965). The popularized result was axioms