Burhan Riaz

Trevor Noble's Social Theory and Social Change was written to explore to

interrelatedness between classification and social theory. In short, the intention of Noble's book

was to assert "that forms of classifications are not and cannot be independent of forms of

theoretical explanation"(Noble 2000). Personally, this book's subject matter struck me to be very

important not to just anthropology but life sciences such biology or genetics. Noble argues that

by the very action of classifying a society in order to analyze it, is akin to basing an analysis on

an assumption"(Noble 2000). For example, in my biology class, we studied the different

taxonomic classes of organisms. However, there have been several major methodologies to

classify animals over the years. This means that the classification of today is radically different

from earlier classification and improper analysis of organisms were made in the past based upon

a theory of classifying animals(Hirst 1976). One could say that in life sciences, classification

systems are historical because they precede one another in the context of time(Hirst 1976). In

anthropology however, "Aristotle's, Montesquieu's, and Weber's classifications of political forms

continue to exist"(Noble 2000).

Much of the book cover's Weber's sociological categories and includes a critique of his

Social Action Theory towards the last chapter. In Weber's Economy and Society, he asserts that

his classifications of types of legitimate dominancy are "one-sided accentuations of reality" but

Noble counters that the Social Action Theory is based on an ongoing theoretical debate (Weber

1976). One criticism of Weber is that his theory's focus is on goal-oriented actions. He does

mention that emotive non-rational actions are used by humans but the distinction is not made

clear when this exactly occurs since his classifications are based on value-rational actions. It

becomes even more confusing when Weber argues that people are driven by their first gut-

reaction and are only half-conscious of what they are doing(Noble 1976). This of course comes

into direct conflict of his initial intention of making a cause and effect model of social theory. I

think the best way to further critique his theory is his focus on social economic policies and its

connection to his theory. He does not question whether people are always rational in terms of

politics. It may be rational to choose a strong leader but is it rational if the leader is reelected by

the same people even though he puts forth policies that disrupts the social order and is

overthrown only by violence and not through a reelection? Shouldn't the mass of society

collectively push out one leader for one they prefer at the instant they are dissatisfied or must

they wait after years of tyranny for a coup d'état. In Weber's theory, those people have some

rational for reelecting a tyrant even though it is harmful to the people. The point of Noble's book

is that any classification is a theory based on theoretical discourse.

Citations

Noble, Trevor.

2000 Social Theory and Social Change. London: Macmillian

Hirst, Paul Q. 

1976 Social Evolution and Sociological Categories. New York: Holmes & Meier.

Weber, Max.

1978 Economy and Society. University of California Press.