"Social Structure" is one of the most fundamental concepts in social sciences. But it caused many confusions among social scientists because of diverse meanings attached to it and serious differences of methods and approaches.
This study is designed ...
"Social Structure" is one of the most fundamental concepts in social sciences. But it caused many confusions among social scientists because of diverse meanings attached to it and serious differences of methods and approaches.
This study is designed to prepare basic conceptual/analytical scheme which is necessary for the analysis of social structure in contemporary Korean society.
For this study, at first, I briefly examined three different theories concerning social structure. And then, I suggested to accept the realist conception of social structure, wich conceived social structure as the system of relationships which underlie and account for the sets of observable social relations and patterns of social consciousness. In this perspective, I supposed that the concept of "social formation" as a structured totality would be a useful tool in analysing social structure as a whole.
Then, I reviewed critically the attempts to analyse social structure in contemporary Korean society applying Bureaucratic-Authoritarian Model. These efforts seemed to have some limitations in grasping the totality of social structure, because the model was fundamentally a theoretical scheme concerning the state in the third world.
Hoping to overcome these limitations. I suggested the concept of "the Third World Social Formation" dominated by an articulation of (at least) two modes of production-a capitalist and a non-capitalist mode, and outlined the main arguments concerning the third world social formation.
But the discussions about the third world social formation have not yet provided a well-organized theoretical frame. In order to be applied to the study of social structure in contemporary Korean society, they need to be supplemented by systematic reconstruction of concepts and theory and furthermore by development of relevant methodology and method which can be applied actually in the empirical study of social structure.