Color Theory

The Color Wheel

A color circle, based on red, yellow and blue, is traditional in the field of art. Sir Isaac Newton
developed the first circular diagram of colors in 1666. Since then scientists and artists have studied
and designed numerous variations of this concept.

Primary colors – are the 3 pigment colors that can not be mixed or formed by any combination of
other colors. All other colors are derived from these 3 hues.

red, yellow, blue

Secondary Colors – These are the colors formed by mixing the primary colors.

green, orange and purple

Tertiary Colors – These are the colors formed by mixing a primary and a secondary color. That’s
why the hue is a two word name, such as blue-green, red-violet, and yellow-orange.
 yellow-orange, red-orange, red-purple, blue-purple, blue-green and yellow-green

color wheel labeled with types of colors in their

proper locations
Warm & Cool Colors

 Warm colors — such as red, yellow, and orange; evoke warmth because they remind us of things
like the sun or fire.
 Cool colors — such as blue, green, and purple (violet); evoke a cool feeling because they remind us
of things like water or grass.

Warm colors advance and cool colors recede, affecting the perception of depth. This theory is based
upon that fact that the eye adjusts when focusing on colors of different wavelengths. Red light waves
have a longer wavelength than blue ones. An image containing both cool and warm colors would
demonstrate contrast of temperature or warm/cool contrast creating more complex relationships
between the color (warm colors can read cooler against a higher intensity warm colors and cool
colors sometimes can advance against predominately warm palette).
 What Is Balance in Art and Why Does It
Matter?
It's all about the composition of your composition
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This panel from Jan Van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece shows great symmetry.

Mondadori Portfolio/Contributor/Getty Images

Visual Arts
 Art & Artists
o Art History
 Architecture
byShelley Esaak

Updated May 06, 2019

Balance in art is one of the basic principles of design, along with contrast,
movement, rhythm, emphasis, pattern, unity, and variety. Balance refers to how
the elements of art (line, shape, color, value, space, form, texture) relate to each
other within the composition in terms of their visual weight to create visual
equilibrium. That is, one side does not seem heavier than another.

In three dimensions, balance is dictated by gravity, and it is easy to tell when

something is balanced or not (if not held down by some means). It falls over if it
is not balanced. On a fulcrum (like a teeter-totter), one side of the object hits the
ground while the other rises. In two dimensions, artists have to rely on the visual
weight of the elements of the composition to determine whether a piece is
balanced. Sculptors rely both on physical and visual weight to determine the
balance.

Humans, perhaps because we are bilaterally symmetrical, have a natural desire to

seek balance and equilibrium. Artists generally strive to create artwork that is
balanced. A balanced work, in which the visual weight is distributed evenly across
the composition, seems stable, makes the viewer feel comfortable, and is pleasing
to the eye. A work that is unbalanced appears unstable, creates tension, and
makes the viewer uneasy. Sometimes, an artist deliberately creates a work that is
unbalanced.

Isamu Noguchi's (1904-1988) sculpture "Red Cube" is an example of a sculpture

that intentionally looks off balance. The red cube is precariously resting on a
point, contrasting with the gray, solid, stable buildings around it, and it creates a
feeling of tension and apprehension.

Types of Balance
There are three main types of balance that are used in art and design:
symmetrical, asymmetrical, and radial. Symmetrical balance, which includes
radial symmetry, repeats patterns of forms systematically. Asymmetrical balance
counterbalances different elements that have equal visual weight or equal
physical and visual weight in a three-dimensional structure. Asymmetrical
balance is based more on the artist's intuition than on a formulaic process.

Symmetrical Balance
Symmetrical balance is when both sides of a piece are equal; that is, they are
identical or almost identical. Symmetrical balance can be established by drawing
an imaginary line through the center of the work, either horizontally or vertically,
and making each half identically or very visually similar. This kind of balance
creates a sense of order, stability, rationality, solemnity, and formality.
Symmetrical balance is often used in institutional architecture (government
buildings, libraries, colleges, and universities) and religious art.

Symmetrical balance may be a mirror image (an exact copy of the other side) or it
may be approximate, with the two sides having slight variations but being quite
similar.

Symmetry around a central axis is called bilateral symmetry. The axis may be
vertical or horizontal.

"The Last Supper" by Italian Renaissance painter Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

is one of the best well-known examples of an artist's creative use of symmetrical
balance. Da Vinci uses the compositional device of symmetrical balance
and linear perspectiveto stress the importance of the central figure, Jesus Christ.
There is slight variation among the figures themselves, but there is the same
number of figures on either side and they are situated along the same horizontal
axis.

Op art is a kind of art that sometimes employs symmetrical balance biaxially —

that is, with symmetry corresponding to both the vertical and horizontal axis.

Crystallographic balance, which finds harmony in repetition (such as color or

shape), is often quite symmetrical. It's also called mosaic balance or all-over
balance. Think of works by Andy Warhol with repeating elements, the
Parlophone "Hard Day's Night" album cover by The Beatles, or even wallpaper
patterns.

Radial Symmetry
Radial symmetry is a variation of symmetrical balance in which the elements are
arranged equally around a central point, as in the spokes of a wheel or the ripples
made in a pond where a stone is dropped. Thus, radial symmetry has a strong
focal point.

Radial symmetry is often seen in nature, as in the petals of a tulip, the seeds of a
dandelion, or in certain marine life, such as jellyfish. It is also seen in religious art
and sacred geometry, as in mandalas, and in contemporary art, as in "Target
With Four Faces" (1955) by the American painter Jasper Johns.

Asymmetrical Balance
In asymmetrical balance, the two sides of a composition are not the same but
appear to have an equal visual weight nonetheless. Negative and positive
shapes are unequal and unevenly distributed throughout the artwork, leading the
viewer's eye through the piece. Asymmetrical balance is a bit more difficult to
achieve than symmetrical balance because each element of art has its own visual
weight relative to the other elements and affects the whole composition.

For example, asymmetrical balance can occur when several smaller items on one
side are balanced by a large item on the other side, or when smaller elements are
placed farther away from the center of the composition than larger elements. A
dark shape can be balanced by several lighter shapes.

Asymmetrical balance is less formal and more dynamic than symmetrical

balance. It may appear more casual but takes careful planning. An example of
asymmetrical balance is Vincent van Gogh's "The Starry Night" (1889). The dark
triangular shape of the trees visually anchoring the left side of the painting is
counterbalanced by the yellow circle of the moon in the upper right corner.
"The Boating Party," by American artist Mary Cassatt (1844–1926), is another
dynamic example of asymmetrical balance, with the dark figure in the foreground
(lower right-hand corner) balanced by the lighter figures and particularly the
light sail in the upper left-hand corner.
The Definition of Symmetrical Balance
Symmetrical balance occurs when you have two identical sides of a design
with a central point of axis -- so if you cut the design in half, the left and right
are mirror images of each other. To be considered perfectly symmetrical, a
design needs to have equally weighted visuals on either side.

Symmetrical design allows you to draw attention to all areas of an image

equally. Since this form of design is usually very structured and rigid in nature,
it’s referred to as formal balance. For marketers, symmetrical design is ideal
for projects like event invitations or discount offers, but can seem boring if
used on more creative pieces.

Let’s take a look at an (admittedly very basic) example of symmetrical

balance:
Not quite the Taj Mahal, but it’ll do.

The Definition of Asymmetrical Balance

Asymmetrical balance occurs when you have different visual images on either
side of a design, and yet the image still seems balanced. To be considered
asymmetrical, a design needs to have unequal visual weight on either side,
but those unequal visuals need to balance each other.

Asymmetrical designs can evoke feelings of movement and seem more

modern than symmetrical designs, but it can be more difficult and less
straightforward to create relationships between the design’s individual
elements.

Let’s take a look at an example of asymmetrical balance:

It’s important to note asymmetrical balance is still strategic -- placing shapes
haphazardly around a page won’t create a compelling composition. To create
a successful asymmetrical design, you still need to figure out how to balance
out the image.

Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night, for instance, uses a notable visual, the
sun, in the top right, and balances it out with a dark cypress tree in the bottom
left. It would not be a successfully asymmetrical balance if van Gogh put both
the sun and tree on the right side of the page.
Studies in pre-capitalist modes of
production
This collection of studies on pre-capitalist societies
develops vital debates on the application of the Marxist
method to history in general, argues Dominic Alexander
Posted Feb 20, 2018 by Dominic Alexander

Capitalism , Marxism Global Review

Originally published: Counterfire (February 15, 2018) |

Marxism is not simply a form of anti-capitalism, but is a theory of the social and
historical nature of humanity. Capitalism was understood by Marx to be a specific
historical phase, in which the cycles and tendencies of human activity are qualitatively
different than in previous periods, each of which had their own specificity. Capitalism
does not represent merely a quantitative increase in a general category of human
activity, such as ‘industry’, or ‘the market’, when the latter is conceived as a historically
undifferentiated mechanism of exchange. Nor does Marxism accept forms of determinist
thinking that rely on single factors, reducing society to its dependence on say, stone,
iron or oil, still less on unmediated tendencies, such as population growth, as found in
Malthusian theories, for example.

Capitalism is, therefore, a ‘mode of production’, a complex system composed of the

social forces of production (in capitalism this would include the organisation and
technology of industrial production) around which are articulated specific social relations
of production (in capitalism, this would include ‘the market’). The operation of the forces
and relations of production require certain ‘superstructural’ institutions, political ones for
example, to ensure their reproduction in their existing forms. This is because human
social systems have been, so far in history, necessarily contradictory; ‘the history of all
hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles’.
Studies in Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production, eds. Laura da Graca and Andrea Zingarelli (Haymarket 2016), 322pp.
Our present focus, as socialists, tends to be on the present, and the class struggle
under capitalism. Nonetheless, the nature of pre-capitalist systems must be of serious
significance to Marxists. If capitalism really is just a historical phase, and if Marxist
explanations of politics in terms of socio-economic structures (forces and relations of
production) are to hold true, then Marxism as a historical method, as well as a politics,
needs to be able to explain, convincingly, how social developments arrived at
capitalism.

Doing that requires an analysis of pre-capitalist modes of production, the foundations of

which were laid by Marx and Engels. This area has not been the least controversial
subject of debate about Marxist theory by any means. This new collection of articles in
the Historical Materialism series is therefore very welcome as it brings to bear a varied
range of case studies from the ancient world to the medieval period on many of the
theoretical issues that have haunted the debate over the years.

Stages and modes of production

The disagreements are indeed substantial and can seem intractable at a basic level,
given that there is not even any consensus about the applicability of the different types
of pre-capitalist modes of production identified by Marx. Stalinist historical theory
reduced a plurality of different possible modes to a single rigid sequence for all class
societies, going from the ancient slave mode, through feudalism to capitalism. This
formula has since been largely rejected for a number of reasons, including its
mechanical determinism, but it was also problematic as it tended to wipe out the clearly
observable differences between the many distinct pre-capitalist class societies on all the
continents.

The rejection of Stalinist mechanical determinism has done little to resolve the
underlying debates. Some historians, such as Chris Wickham, who features in this
collection, argue that the only distinction that can be made between pre-capitalist class
societies is that between one based on a slave mode of production and all the others,
based on lord-tenant relations, or state taxation regimes. These latter are sometimes all
summed up as the ‘tributary mode of production’ (subsuming European feudalism, most
ancient states, and all other class societies from India to China, for example).

John Haldon and others go further, and see it as only possible to conceptualise one
mode for pre-capitalist class societies. This would reduce the total number of possible
modes of production before socialism to three; pre-class society, pre-capitalist class
society, and capitalism. Others do not accept this reductionism. In this collection,
Andrea Zingarelli makes a strong case for the applicability of Marx’s ‘Asiatic mode of
production’ to the case of the ancient Egyptian state, in all three of its Old Kingdom,
Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom iterations. The primacy of the state inhibits the
development of private property in this system, and sets up distinctive social relations
as a result. However, historians like Haldon would presumably respond by denying that
an analytical distinction between state and private property can differentiate past modes
of production.

The law of value in history

A resolution to all these problems will not be made soon, but this collection contains
some important arguments, and helps to clarify the parameters of the debate. Perhaps
one of the most illuminating contributions adopts an apparently limited focus by
investigating the applicability of the law of value to pre-capitalist economies. Octavio
Colombo begins with a few apparently contradictory statements by Marx and Engels on
whether value as determined by labour time governs all systems of exchange, capitalist
and pre-capitalist, or not. From one view, given certain conditions, it did apply to the
produce of craftsmen and peasants alike ‘in the ancient as well as the modern world’
(p.239). In a different analysis, it is only the development of the capitalist market which
enables the law of value to operate, whereas beforehand it did so only ‘in a qualitative
sense’, or only in incomplete and imperfects ways (p.240).

The law of value, Colombo explains, requires certain conditions for ‘the tendential
adaptation of prices to values’ to take place consistently (p.266). That is to say, the
value of a particular commodity, which is the amount of social labour time expended
upon it, requires the right social conditions for the price, the amount for which it is
actually exchanged, to tend to reflect that value, or socially necessary labour time. For
example, capital needs to be able to move freely between sectors of production, in
order to find the most profitable investment. In addition, there needs to be a sufficient
consistency and completeness of exchange relations, for commodities to be regularly
exchanged according to abstract exchange values. In fact, before fully capitalist
relations were established, peasant produce could often be exchanged at less than its
labour value, if peasants were simply selling their surplus beyond their subsistence
needs; ‘Under these conditions, peasant surplus labour time is given to society for free’
(p.240).

The way this works is that the peasant family produces its own subsistence, but will do
the extra work to produce a surplus to sell in local markets, possibly to earn the money
to pay taxes or rent demanded in cash, or even for a small discretionary income above
subsistence. In these circumstances, peasants will often be willing, or more often lack
the choice to refuse, to exchange their surplus for substantially less than the value of its
labour. Capitalists, in contrast cannot do this consistently and still make a profit. In this
way, the forms of exploitation of the peasantry before capitalism acted in such a way as
to frustrate the tendential emergence of the law of value.

There are many other conditions which prevent the law of value from operating under
pre-capitalist simple commodity production, not least the vagaries of nature. Where
there is not sufficient social and technological control over nature’s unpredictability, the
price of agricultural produce is affected frequently by dearth and over abundance.
Colombo notes that feudal lords were able to take advantage of these circumstances in
various ways to extract surplus from the peasantry, incidentally once more frustrating
the operation of the law of value. Another problem of general, although varying,
importance in pre-capitalist societies is ‘the lack of efficient means of transportation that
would have allowed for the relative equalisation of the local or regional imbalances’
(p.251). Thus, while labour was ultimately the source of value still, the law of value did
not operate with any consistency before the capitalist market became sufficiently
dominant to condition all production and exchange in a given society.

Capitalism represents more than just a quantitative increase in production for the
market by this account. Moreover, it can only emerge at a threshold moment when the
law of value comes into operation over a whole social system. Colombo concludes:

‘value as a social relation can only function when prices reflect their production
conditions, and this occurs only when the relations of production are governed by the
law of value. In consequence, a general formulation of the concept of simple commodity
production cannot be immediately applied to the study of the medieval peasant
economy; first it must determine through historical analysis the manner in which the
latter is shaped by the dominant mode of production’ (p.267).

This argument has important consequences for the question of the analysis of modes of
production in general, because it demands an understanding of the operation of
elements of society in terms of the whole. The status of simple commodity production, in
this instance, cannot be determined by its own characteristics as such, but rather only
through an understanding of how it is embedded within a totality. The whole determines
the parts, and not the other way around.

Peasants and lords in medieval Spain

A similar perception is at work in Laura da Graca’s consideration of the feudalisation of
northern Spain in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. She makes critical use of Chris
Wickham’s concept of a ranked peasant society, or peasant mode of production, which
he explored in Framing the Early Middle Ages (2005). This idea was certainly fruitful
there in making sense of a complex and ranked society like early medieval Ireland,
where a true aristocratic class was very slow to develop. Da Graca’s analysis similarly
takes as its starting point an essentially egalitarian peasant society, with private
property, kings and nobility, but without fully developed class relations.

Da Graca convincingly shows how peasant-based client and patron connections, with
reciprocal gift relations, have their own logic, opposed to that operating through
aristocratic attempts to create seigneurial relations. The peasants’ behaviour had an
ability to disrupt and impede efforts at feudalisation, not least through Spanish custom
whereby freemen could make their own choice of lord each year (p.195). Nonetheless,
in the end it was vulnerable to aristocratic invasion such that at a certain point there was
‘a catastrophe-flip from a peasant to a feudal economic logic’ (p.169, quoting Wickham,
Framing the Early Middle Ages).

However, da Graca, while showing the explanatory value of Wickham’s peasant mode,
is also critical of his wider conceptual approach, arguing that it is not adequate to typify
societies strictly according to ‘exploitative modes of production’ which ‘are reduced to
forms of surplus extraction’. Instead, she argues that in her analysis of the feudalisation
of Spanish society:

‘It follows that productive forces, and even relations of production, do not singularise a
mode of production. A mode of production, according to the Formen [Marx’s writings on
the subject], implies a form of property at its base … These elements [the laws of the
mode of production] were assessed on the analytic level of the social formation, since
they allow for the characterisation of the forms of articulation between the aristocracy
and free communities, and in our case highlight the process of subordination of the
latter to the feudal mode of production’ (pp.202-3).

It is possible to go further here, and suggest that the gift and client relations that da
Graca discusses can, in fact, be thought of as part of the relations of production in a
wider sense. These customs are in practice relations of distribution, which, as part of
the social totality, form part of the social conditions for production relations.

Similarly, there is also a problem with Wickham’s characterisation of early medieval

Europe, in da Graca’s words, as a picture of feudal enclaves like ‘leopard spots’ within a
larger number of peasant-mode communities. The issue is not precisely this image,
which is probably a good empirical description of much of the post-Roman West, but
rather the conceptual consequences. It suggests that ‘modes of production’ can exist as
small enclaves side by side. Jairus Banaji has pointed out that this confuses Marx’s two
usages of the term. The simple meaning refers to the different specific mannersof
production (factory versus handicraft, for example), which can easily exist side by
side.[1] The more complex meaning refers to the whole social system and its productive
relations. In confusing these two usages, an analysis based on dialectical totality is
replaced with one based on positivist categories.
Feudalism’s historical context
Assessing European feudalism in terms of ahistorical categories also does not fully
account for the historical situation; the centuries after the collapse of the Roman
Empire. Here the mode of production was clearly conditioned at the level of the totality
by a tax collecting state, whose legions not only ensured those revenues were raised,
but also guaranteed the far-flung estates of the slave-owning senatorial aristocracy. The
collapse of this state, its armies, and the commodity exchange system which it
supported, meant that social relations became radically localised. The Roman class
structure, which had depended upon a widespread system of enforcement, could no
longer be sustained. All sorts of elements of class society fell apart with the fall of the
state, and the surviving aristocracy necessarily transformed itself into more regional
feudal elites, with a much narrower and poorer base of exploitative relations. This is the
context for La Graca’s more theoretical observation that the aristocracy ‘assimilates
itself to the peasant mode’, that is to say, the old elites become merely tribal leaders
(p.166). In places, for example most of Roman Britain, class society did indeed collapse
altogether.

Even so, what occurs after the collapse of the Roman system is not simply an involution
back to pre-Roman society, probably even in Britain. The extent to which communal and
tribal property systems had been broken up would have been a key legacy. Where there
is evidence, a preponderance of private peasant property appears to be normal, which
Wickham took as the starting point for his peasant mode. In da Graca’s Spain, there
was also the post-Roman legacy of the Visigothic successor state, as well as the later
Arabic civilisation. These class systems created the conditions for the survival of an
aristocracy in the northern parts of Spain.

Thus, while the ‘leopard spots’ image is usefully descriptive, it doesn’t quite capture the
dynamic of a feudal mode of production in its early stage, where exploitative relations
had only a limited purchase outside the great aristocratic estates that survived the
Roman collapse. Rather than there being separate ‘peasant’ and ‘feudal’ modes co-
existing, it would make more sense to focus on how the aristocracy used the remains of
Roman political institutions (and particularly the Catholic Church) to reconstruct quasi-
state forms that would guarantee their dominance over the whole society. The contrast
between aristocratic and peasant modes therefore captures a picture of the nature of
class struggle in the early medieval period, rather than two separate, competing modes
of production. Again, the totality needs to be considered if the dynamics of the parts are
to make sense.
Chris Wickham’s own contribution to this collection, an analysis of saga evidence that
reveals the emerging power of a feudal aristocracy in eleventh and twelfth-century
Norway, in effect also documents a class struggle parallel to that found in northern
Spain. The client-patron relationships are quite different in terms of cultural detail, but
bear strong structural affinities nonetheless. This essay, by the way, is a tour de force in
the creative use of dubious narrative evidence. The sagas can in no way be considered
reliable evidence of the events they describe, but the social assumptions of their
authors are, as Wickham shows, a marvellous store of evidence for the development of
social relations.

Slavery as a mode production

Nonetheless, the analysis brings up another recurring issue in these debates, which is
the role of slavery in different modes of production. Slavery, like in fact wage labour, is a
form of exploitation that re-appears in many different societies. While in capitalism,
wage labour is the dominant form of exploitation, elsewhere the presence of wage
labour as a simple form, is not indicative of the wider set of capitalist relations. Wage
labour on its own account is not a sign of capitalism, in embryo or in any other sense.
Similarly, the presence of slaves in a social formation is not automatically diagnostic of
a slave mode of production.

Thus, in medieval Norway, the aristocracy was engaged in using client networks to gain
purchase on political power, and to feudalise society, very gradually. Yet, according to
Wickham, the aristocracy’s power was based on the presence of slaves on their
estates. Unusually, these slaves appeared to live in the same household as their lord
(pp.155-6). This would seem to indicate that far from these arrangements representing
an embryonic form of the slave mode of production, slavery here was conforming to the
wider household-based relations of production. Wickham indeed notes that ‘this mode
[slavery], even more than tenancy, was dominated by the hegemonic structures and
economic logic of the peasant mode’ (p.155).

Conversely, it is important to recognise when slavery really does condition the entire
mode of production, as in the Roman Empire. Carlos García Mac Gaw takes, in
contrast, a particularly reductionist approach to social relations in his analysis of slavery,
insisting that as a form of exploitation, it be identified very narrowly only with work gangs
on plantations (p.96). In this way, the analysis can find that slavery was only a
subsidiary part of the Roman economy, particularly as slavery outside the strictly
plantation context is dismissed as merely legal in nature (p.104). This enables Rome to
be assimilated to the tributary mode of production (p.108).

This direction of analysis seems very unhelpful. It means that Marxism is not able to
make any serious distinctions between different class formations before capitalism, if
the Roman Empire cannot be qualitatively distinguished in form from the feudal society
that followed it. The unfortunate results of this kind of approach seem to be confirmed
by the contribution from John Haldon, where he claims point blank that ‘in the period
between the second or third century and the thirteenth or fourteenth century’, there was
no change of mode of production at all. This is despite the list he gives of developments
in productive and military technology, trade and commerce, and state organisation,
across the period. And yet:

‘once again it is impossible to see the quantitative and qualitative transformation in the
forces of production that promoted the sort of modal shift required by the classic
understanding of the concept “mode of production”. There were changes, shifts … none
of them qualifies as a modal transformation’ (p.215).

A non-Marxist, reading this judgement, would surely conclude that the concept of a
‘mode of production’ had no analytical use or value, if it cannot grasp as significant the
massive transformations across this thousand-year period in western Europe.

In contrast, if the analysis of forms of exploitation is located within an understanding of

the social totality, it is easy to see that slavery in the Roman Empire was the dominant
relation which tended to condition the others. It is the opposite case compared to
Wickham’s picture of early medieval Norway. Slavery cannot be dismissed as a legal
form in the ancient world, since those legal relations related very meaningfully to the
whole set of social relations.

Failing to see the centrality of slavery in the ancient world also makes a nonsense of the
patterns of historical development in that time: slavery was not an exceptional or
marginal phenomenon which only briefly dominated society. Roman slavery was the
culmination of a dynamic system which clearly originated in ancient Greece, notably in
Athens, and was then exported to the Greek colony cities, for example, Syracuse in
Sicily (Sicily, of course, was to become a key heartland of the Roman plantation
system). The Roman Empire represents the maturing of a web of social relations which
had slavery at its core. The Roman state was the outgrowth of this system, which
existed in order to maintain slavery as the dominant relation. Of course, the state also,
contradictorily, engendered processes which ultimately undermined the system of
slavery and the state itself.

The medieval social order which followed had entirely different dynamics, and was
unable to support anything like the Roman state. This fact ought to point a Marxist
analysis towards discovering fundamentally different social relations. Moreover, the
apparent regression in sophistication in the medieval period actually masks the
development in efficiency of class exploitation. The Roman Empire needed a
centralised system to concentrate the fruits of exploitation from over a very wide area,
and the result was the appearance of fabulous power and wealth in a few centres.

Conversely, medieval states were slow to develop any great power or geographic
range, partly because networks of landowners were able to maintain class relations on
a much more local level, without massive state assistance. This can only be because
individual property holding was much more embedded than it had been before the
Roman Empire. Feudalism as a mode of production reflects the development of social
forces of production by the preceding mode. Assuming both social formations are
identical in depending upon tenancy relations (with taxation folded into that category)
flattens out observable historical development, and effectively abandons the attempt to
explain it through the Marxist method.

Base and superstructure

Haldon’s argument claims to be making an effort to resolve ‘accusations, sometimes
reasonably grounded, of economic essentialism or reductionism’ (p.213). Yet in trying to
find a middle ground between the ‘analytical Marxism’ of John Roemer and John Elster
on the one hand, and ‘the structuralism of thinkers like Althusser’ (p.205), he has not
found any dialectical core of Marxism. In a discussion of base and superstructure in the
Byzantine Empire, Haldon argues that belief, Christianity in this case, needs to be
worked into an analytical framework. While religion ‘was not in itself a relation of
production in any way’, it nonetheless impacted upon the economic base (pp.229-30).

This analysis seems not to have overcome any of the limitations of the reductive
understanding of base and superstructure that it was attempting to accomplish. There is
in fact a reductive approach in the very formulation of the terms of debate about
‘religion’. Theology certainly belongs in the ‘superstructural’ category, but the different
Christian churches were very material institutions, which embedded and enforced
particular social relations in their host societies. The medieval split between Catholic
Christianity and Orthodoxy was nominally over quite obscure theological points, but
reflected very real chasms between the social organisation prevalent in the two
successor halves of the Roman Empire.

The two social institutions were driven to find points of theological difference, because
the logic of their practice was embedded in two very different polities. One existed
without a functioning secular state, and the other with a very rigid and dominant one.
The result was that the two Churches could not co-operate. This is witnessed in the
largely illiterate, Catholic West’s total inability to grasp the nature of the iconoclast
controversies in the rather more literate East. Misunderstandings over these kinds of
issues, at the level of social consciousness, made a split unavoidable.

Social being determines social consciousness, but social being needs to be understood
in a relational, dialectical fashion. A Marxist analysis must relate the parts dialectically to
a totality, and cannot be served by reductive analytical categories that are defined by
fixed internal characteristics, rather than by their dynamic interrelations. The best
contributions in this fascinating collection are alive to the way that Marx developed his
dialectical approach to analysis, and in a range of detailed case studies, are able to
show the fruitful potential the study of modes of production can still provide. Indeed, if
Marxists can overcome subservience to positivistic analytical presumptions, and
recapture Marx’s own way of thinking, then we are only at the beginning of a potential
transformation in our understanding of human history.
Sociological Paradigm #3: Symbolic Interactionist
Theory
Symbolic interactionism is a micro-level theory that focuses on the relationships
among individuals within a society. Communication—the exchange of meaning through
language and symbols—is believed to be the way in which people make sense of their
social worlds. Theorists Herman and Reynolds (1994) note that this perspective sees
people as being active in shaping the social world rather than simply being acted upon.

George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) is considered a founder of symbolic interactionism

though he never published his work on it (LaRossa and Reitzes 1993). Mead’s student,
Herbert Blumer, coined the term “symbolic interactionism” and outlined these basic
premises: humans interact with things based on meanings ascribed to those things; the
ascribed meaning of things comes from our interactions with others and society; the
meanings of things are interpreted by a person when dealing with things in specific
circumstances (Blumer 1969). If you love books, for example, a symbolic interactionist
might propose that you learned that books are good or important in the interactions you
had with family, friends, school, or church; maybe your family had a special reading time
each week, getting your library card was treated as a special event, or bedtime stories
were associated with warmth and comfort.

Social scientists who apply symbolic-interactionist thinking look for patterns of

interaction between individuals. Their studies often involve observation of one-on-one
interactions. For example, while a conflict theorist studying a political protest might
focus on class difference, a symbolic interactionist would be more interested in how
individuals in the protesting group interact, as well as the signs and symbols protesters

use to communicate their message. The

focus on the importance of symbols in building a society led sociologists like Erving
Goffman (1922–1982) to develop a technique called dramaturgical analysis. Goffman
used theater as an analogy for social interaction and recognized that people’s
interactions showed patterns of cultural “scripts.” Because it can be unclear what part a
person may play in a given situation, he or she has to improvise his or her role as the
situation unfolds (Goffman 1958).
Studies that use the symbolic interactionist perspective are more likely to use qualitative
research methods, such as in-depth interviews or participant observation, because they
seek to understand the symbolic worlds in which research subjects live.

Constructivism is an extension of symbolic interaction theory which proposes that

reality is what humans cognitively construct it to be. We develop social constructs based
on interactions with others, and those constructs that last over time are those that have
meanings which are widely agreed-upon or generally accepted by most within the
society. This approach is often used to understand what’s defined as deviant within a
society. There is no absolute definition of deviance, and different societies have
constructed different meanings for deviance, as well as associating different behaviors
with deviance. One situation that illustrates this is what you believe you’re to do if you
find a wallet in the street. In the United States, turning the wallet in to local authorities
would be considered the appropriate action, and to keep the wallet would be seen as
deviant. In contrast, many Eastern societies would consider it much more appropriate to
keep the wallet and search for the owner yourself; turning it over to someone else, even
the authorities, would be considered deviant behavior.

The symbolic interaction perspective, also called symbolic interactionism, is a

major framework of the sociological theory. This perspective relies on the
symbolic meaning that people develop and build upon in the process of social
interaction. Although symbolic interactionism traces its origins to Max Weber's
assertion that individuals act according to their interpretation of the meaning of
their world, the American philosopher George Herbert Mead introduced this
perspective to American sociology in the 1920s.

The Subjective Meanings

Symbolic interaction theory analyzes society by addressing the subjective
meanings that people impose on objects, events, and behaviors. Subjective
meanings are given primacy because it is believed that people behave based on
what they believe and not just on what is objectively true. Thus, society is thought
to be socially constructed through human interpretation. People interpret one
another’s behavior, and it is these interpretations that form the social bond.
These interpretations are called the “definition of the situation.”

For example, why would young people smoke cigarettes even when all objective
medical evidence points to the dangers of doing so? The answer is in the
definition of the situation that people create. Studies find that teenagers are well
informed about the risks of tobacco, but they also think that smoking is cool, that
they will be safe from harm, and that smoking projects a positive image to their
peers. So, the symbolic meaning of smoking overrides the facts regarding
smoking and risk.

Fundamental Aspects of Social Experience and Identities

Some fundamental aspects of our social experience and identities,
like race and gender, can be understood through the symbolic interactionist lens.
Having no biological bases at all, both race and gender are social constructs that
function based on what we believe to be true about people, given what they look
like. We use socially constructed meanings of race and gender to help us decide
who to interact with, how to do so, and to help us determine, sometimes
inaccurately, the meaning of a person's words or actions.

One shocking example of how this theoretical concept plays out within the social
construct of race is manifested in the fact that many people, regardless of race,
believe that lighter skinned blacks and Latinos are smarter than their darker
skinned counterparts. This phenomenon, called colorism, occurs because of the
racist stereotype that has been encoded in skin color over centuries. Concerning
gender, we see the problematic way in which meaning is attached to the symbols
"man" and "woman" in the sexist trend of college students routinely rating male
professors more highly than female ones. Or, in pay inequality based on gender.

Symbolic interactionism
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Symbolic interactionism is a sociological theory that develops from practical considerations and
alludes to people's particular utilization of dialect to make images and normal implications,
for deduction and correspondence with others.[1] In other words, it is a frame of reference to better
understand how individuals interact with one another to create symbolic worlds, and in return, how
these worlds shape individual behaviors.[2] It is a framework that helps understand how society is
preserved and created through repeated interactions between individuals. The interpretation process
that occurs between interactions help create and recreate meaning. It is the shared understanding
and interpretations of meaning that affect the interaction between individuals. Individuals act on the
premise of a shared understanding of meaning within their social context. Thus, interaction and
behavior is framed through the shared meaning that objects and concepts have attached to them.
Symbolic interactionism comes from a sociological perspective which developed around the middle
of the twentieth century and that continues to be influential in some areas of the discipline. It is
particularly important in microsociology and social psychology. It is derived from the American
philosophy of pragmatism and particularly from the work of George Herbert Mead, as a pragmatic
method to interpret social interactions.[3]

Criticisms[edit]
Symbolic interactionists are often criticized for being overly impressionistic in their research methods
and somewhat unsystematic in their theories. It is argued that the theory is not one theory, but
rather, the framework for many different theories. Additionally, some theorists have a problem with
symbolic interaction theory due to its lack of testability. These objections, combined with the fairly
narrow focus of interactionist research on small-group interactions and other social psychological
issues, have relegated the interactionist camp to a minority position among sociologists (albeit a
fairly substantial minority). Much of this criticism arose during the 1970s in the U.S.
when quantitativeapproaches to sociology were dominant. Perhaps the best known of these is
by Alvin Gouldner.[26]

Interactionism

Advantages Disadvantages

 Focuses on the individuals rather  They don't take into consideration every individual.
that categorising us into groups of Some people are unable to make choices and have
society. little free will.

 Allows us to compare the way we  We don't get to choose consequences for actions.
act with different people.
 Underestimates the power of structure.
 Helps us understand the social
construction of the world.