{"id":10110,"date":"2016-11-03T22:31:40","date_gmt":"2016-11-04T05:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/?p=10110"},"modified":"2016-11-03T22:31:40","modified_gmt":"2016-11-04T05:31:40","slug":"what-can-social-theory-do-for-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/what-can-social-theory-do-for-me\/","title":{"rendered":"What Can Social Theory Do For ME?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Marx-peace.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-10113\" src=\"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Marx-peace-231x300.jpg\" alt=\"Marx peace\" width=\"198\" height=\"257\" \/><\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u201cSo, who is your favorite social theorist?\u201d This isn\u2019t really the kind of question that comes up at dinner parties, sporting events, or (let\u2019s be honest) in seminary hallways. Even now, after reading <em>Contemporary Social Theory<\/em> by Anthony Elliott, I couldn\u2019t begin to answer that question. I can tell you that social theorists dissect social phenomena and structures, analyzing past, present, and future societal movements in order to better understand how human society works. I can also tell you that there is no one particular common definition of \u201csociety\u201d used by these experts. Well, that helps doesn\u2019t it? Maybe I could drop the names of three classical social theorists \u2013 Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim. Sure, because every good party ends up in a discussion about Marxism, right?<\/p>\n<p>Actually, after reading Elliott\u2019s book, I would have to say there are many interesting things to discuss about social theory, just not perhaps by using all of the specific lingo or by casually dropping names like Lacan or Habermas. While these things are important for research and in-depth study, the key to a discussion about social theory is simply knowing the one thing social theorists DO agree on, that \u201cwe live in new worlds of social and cultural organization\u201d (8). Social theorists observe these changes and try to make sense of how they impact humans, and vice versa. Some theories (like those of our beloved Freud and his friends) tend toward some pretty weird psychological machinations, while others focus deeply on how industrialization and technology have and will impacted humanity.<\/p>\n<p>Elliott gives five themes or questions that impact social theory and are highlighted in his book (13-16):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How do individuals relate to society?<\/li>\n<li>What are the dominant values of a society?<\/li>\n<li>How does society adapt to as well as drive social change?<\/li>\n<li>How are issues of gender and sexuality played out (consciously or subconsciously) in society?<\/li>\n<li>How are social, political, and cultural processes displayed in the identity and emotional lives of individuals?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These questions, more than the explanations and descriptions that followed, helped me understand the importance of social theory in leadership. In <em>Heroic Leadership<\/em> we learned how the Jesuits \u201cread\u201d a society and took risks in order to impact people for their Kingdom mission. The five questions above can serve as useful tools for leaders of any organization or community. Read them again. What would happen if each of us answered these specific questions about our own community in our own Kingdom mission? For example, if I am trying to talk to my community about the importance of mutual submission rather than hierarchy, wouldn\u2019t it be crucial for me to know the dominant values, the ability to adapt to change, what kind of issues regarding gender and sexuality are obvious or latent, and how social, political, and cultural processes show up in our individuals? Social theory may be traditionally done on a grand scale, but who says we can\u2019t use the principles to understand our own organizations?<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t want to minimize or gloss over the depth of work that social theorists do to try to understand the human condition. While it sometimes feels as if they have gone so deep that they have wandered down the rabbit-hole, social theorists create a giant lens through which we can attempt to see ourselves. I was particularly fascinated by the chapter on Feminism and Post-Feminist Theory (186-230). There is no way to quickly summarize this chapter (other than to say that Freud still has too much authority), but the fact that there are people who are struggling through the psychology, sociology, and anthropology of our society to try to make sense of how patriarchy has survived all these years and why women continue to struggle for equality helps me know that the work I do with young women and men has a foundation and structure. I don\u2019t claim to understand all of the things they claim \u2013 in fact some of it seems absolutely weird \u2013 but I am grateful for the work they have done and continue to do.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/say-one-thing-mean-your-mother.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-10112\" src=\"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/say-one-thing-mean-your-mother-300x265.jpg\" alt=\"say one thing mean your mother\" width=\"239\" height=\"211\" \/><\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/freudslip.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-10111\" src=\"http:\/\/dminlgp.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/freudslip-300x212.jpg\" alt=\"freudslip\" width=\"300\" height=\"212\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u201cSo, who is your favorite social theorist?\u201d This isn\u2019t really the kind of question that comes up at dinner parties, sporting events, or (let\u2019s be honest) in seminary hallways. Even now, after reading Contemporary Social Theory by Anthony Elliott, I couldn\u2019t begin to answer that question. I can tell you that social theorists [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[238,719],"class_list":["post-10110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-elliott","tag-social-theory","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}