Citizenship, Positivism and Sociological Imagination: Key Social Theories

1. Citizenship and Status

Citizenship grants full membership in a community. Everyone who holds this status is entitled to equal rights and bears equal duties.

Workhouses

• High walls and a carceral system
• Separation of families

Objectives

• Reduce the costs of caring for the poor, removing vagrants from the streets and giving children schooling.
• Everything in exchange for hard labour, encouraging people to work for their own livelihood.

The Poor Law was an aid measure and not, as many believe, a threat to capitalism.

The major problem that citizenship grew out of was the system of social classes. How could rights be distributed equally within a system of inequalities?

Poverty is essential for the rich. It is an indispensable ingredient for civilization.

Key Concepts

Poverty: an obligation to work.

Destitution: when a family does not have its own minimum livelihood.

Humanitarians lamented the indigent but doubted neither the justice of the system of inequality. The unpleasant features of inequality were treated as uncomfortable but acceptable.

The nucleus of citizenship is civil rights. These are indispensable to a competitive market economy and guarantee each individual's status.

2. Positivism: A Reaction Against Abstract Rationalism of the Liberals

• Scientific review of social issues.
• Positivism professed a deterministic philosophy, favouring systematic and experimental methods. It considered unscientific anything that linked phenomena to final causes.
• Observe social life scientifically, as a means toward intuitive improvement and permanent evolution.

"Science and technology for the good of all, to establish order and generate progress." Order and Progress.

Positivism is a philosophy of the world that seeks to understand the existence of laws inherent in nature, which humankind can know and use in its service.

The more scientific knowledge grows, the more phenomena that were once explained only by divine action can now be explained and controlled through natural laws.

Eugenics and Hygienics

Eugenics addressed problems connected with race (diseases, mental and physical problems). Proposals included extermination or sterilization, intended to achieve a purer and stronger race.

Hygienics addressed collective problems, with sanitation proposals aimed at prevention. It condemned miscegenation.

3. The Sociological Imagination

The distinction between personal problems and social problems is one of the most useful distinctions that the sociological imagination provides.

Personal Problems

A personal problem is a threat to the individual's values that they must resolve on their own. It occurs within the scope of their relationships with others and concerns their sense of self. As a private matter, it is a disturbance.

Social Problems

A social problem is a threat to public values. It involves a crisis in the institutional arrangements that are almost always in place. It occurs when the various small-scale environments interpenetrate and blend to form a broader structure, and it generates a sense of panic.