The Problem of Order: What Unites and Divides Society

Discusses the sources of order and disorder in society, the theories of Hobbes and Freud, the disparity between group and individual, and group conflict

Wrong, a professor of sociology at New York University and author of Power: Its Forms, Bases and Uses , offers a scholarly and highly abstract discussion of major theorists of social order. Maintaining that any emphasis on a single solution denies the complexity of human nature, he analyzes political theorists likes Hobbes and Locke, sociologists like Talcott Parsons and Peter Berger and the all-encompassing worldviews of Marx and Freud. After discussing the tensions between individuals and groups, Wrong addresses the relationship between group conflict and social order. Only at the book's end does he apply theory to contemporary fears of growing ethnic and religious disorder or a totalitarian excess of order. Looking at the contemporary loss of faith and the "end of ideology" occasioned by the fall of the Soviet Union, Wrong notes that no matter what happens to nation states, the basic units of social order--the family, the Gemeinschaft , the network joined by the common goal--will survive.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A close, challenging look at what--according to numerous philosophers and social thinkers--prompts individuals and societies to converge or separate, from respected New York University sociologist Wrong (Power, 1988). As is quickly made clear, the problem of order has been an on- going concern from Aristotle on, but for Wrong the tone of inquiry adopts a distinctly modern cast in the 17th century, with Thomas Hobbes's description of life as ``solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.'' The Hobbesian notion of society as a perpetual state of conflict, a war of all against all, contrasts with more positive views such as those of Durkheim and Talcott Parsons, who were more inclined to see the social fabric as providing a nurturing environment for the moral and intellectual betterment of the species. The distinction between personal conflict, as defined by Freud in terms of id, ego, and superego, and group struggles carefully theorized in Marx's work as class-based, allows Wrong to examine both the individual and the societal role in maintaining or frustrating order, with the result that social relations in all their complexity are ultimately addressed. His conclusion, however, that ``social order is indestructible so long as human beings remain alive,'' foists an unsupported optimism on a world situation in which nations are splintering and group violence is on the rise. Heavy going for the uninitiated--terms like ``normative functionalism'' and ``time-space distanciation'' are thrown out like punches in a free-for-all--but, still, a useful survey of theorists through the ages who have grappled with humanity's paradoxical, almost schizophrenic embrace of both order and conflict. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

For theorists like Wrong, the most fruitful--and insistent--question in sociology remains the oldest one: Why don't we act in our self-interest even more than we do? Wrong reads closely formulations of the question by seminal thinkers in Western civilization: Hobbes, of course, who first made problematic the question's subject, social order; Rousseau; Locke; and in this century, Freud and the American system builder, Talcott Parsons, who is currently enjoying a revival. Wrong's analysis is abstract; for some readers, it may be too philosophical, involving too many conceptual distinctions and not enough narrative and recitation of facts and hysteria over contemporary disorders. Others may relish Wrong's rigorous and sustained readings of canonical theory and his belief in human nature--the opposite of what he famously called the oversocialized conception of man long before such a formulation became at all fashionable among his peers. With Wrong as their medium, Hobbes and others help us think at length about the war of all against all, though hardly resolve it. But then, sustained thought is itself a kind of resolution. Roland Wulbert