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| Ancient times | |
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Sociological reasoning may be traced back at least as far as the ancient Greeks (cf. Xenophanes′ remark: "If horses would adore gods, these gods would resemble horses"). Proto- sociological observations are to be found in the founding texts of Western philosophy (Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Polybius and so on), as well as in the non-European thought of figures such as Confucius.[2] The characteristic trends in the sociological thinking of the ancient Greeks can be traced back to the social environment. Because there was rarely any extensive or highly centralized political organization within states this allowed the tribal spirit of localism and provincialism to have free play. This tribal spirit of localism and provincialism pervaded most of the Greek thinking upon social phenomena.[3] The origin of the survey can be traced back to the Doomesday Book ordered by king William I in 1086.[4][5] There is evidence of early Muslim sociology from the 14th century. Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406), in his Muqaddimah (later translated as Prolegomena in Latin), the introduction to a seven volume analysis of universal history, was the first to advance social philosophy and social science in formulating theories of social cohesion and social conflict. He is thus considered by some to be the forerunner of sociology.[6][7][8][9][10][11]
[edit] Tags:Sociology,Science,Logic,Social Science,Ancient Greeks,Xenophanes,Herodotus,Thucydides,Plato,Polybius,Confucius,Survey,Doomesday Book,William I,Early Muslim Sociology,Ibn Khaldun,Muqaddimah,Latin,Universal History,Social Philosophy,Social Cohesion,Social Conflict,Philosophy, | |
| Comte, Spencer and Marx | |
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Auguste Comte
The Positivist temple in Porto Alegre
The term ("sociologie") was first coined by the French essayist Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (1748–1836).[12] (from the Latin: socius, "companion"; and the suffix -ology, "the study of", from Greek λόγος, lógos, "knowledge" [13][14]).
The term was independently re-invented, and introduced as a neologism, by the French thinker Auguste Comte (1798–1857) in 1838.[15] Comte had earlier expressed his work as "social physics", but that term had been appropriated by others, most notably a Belgian statistician, Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874). Writing after the original enlightenment political philosophers of social contract, Comte hoped to unify all studies of humankind through the scientific understanding of the social realm. His own sociological scheme was typical of the 19th century humanists; he believed all human life passed through distinct historical stages and that, if one could grasp this progress, one could prescribe the remedies for social ills. Sociology was to be the "queen science" in Comte's schema; all basic physical sciences had to arrive first, leading to the most fundamentally difficult science of human society itself.[15] Comte has thus come to be viewed as the "Father of Sociology".[15] Comte delineated his broader philosophy of science in The Course in Positive Philosophy [1830-1842], whereas his A General View of Positivism (1865) emphasised the particular goals of sociology.
In later life, Comte developed a 'religion of humanity' for positivist societies in order to fulfil the cohesive function once held by traditional worship. In 1849, he proposed a calendar reform called the 'positivist calendar'. For close associate John Stuart Mill, it was possible to distinguish between a "good Comte" (the author of the Course in Positive Philosophy) and a "bad Comte" (the author of the secular-religious system).[16] The system was unsuccessful but met with the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species to influence the proliferation of various Secular Humanist organizations in the 19th century, especially through the work of secularists such as George Holyoake and Richard Congreve. Although Comte's English followers, including George Eliot and Harriet Martineau, for the most part rejected the full gloomy panoply of his system, they liked the idea of a religion of humanity and his injunction to "vivre pour altrui" ("live for others", from which comes the word "altruism").[17]
Karl Marx rejected the positivist sociology of Comte but was of central influence in founding structural social science.
Comte's account of social evolution bears similarity to Karl Marx's (1818–1883) view that human society would progress toward a communist peak. This is perhaps unsurprising as both were profoundly influenced by the early Utopian socialist, Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825), who was at one time Comte's mentor. Both thinkers intended to develop a new scientific ideology in the wake of European secularisation. Marx, in the tradition of Hegelianism, rejected the positivist method, but in attempting to develop a science of society nevertheless became recognized as a founder of sociology later as the word gained wider meaning. Isaiah Berlin described Marx as the "true father" of modern sociology, "in so far as anyone can claim the title."[18]
To have given clear and unified answers in familiar empirical terms to those theoretical questions which most occupied men's minds at the time, and to have deduced from them clear practical directives without creating obviously articifial links between the two, was the principle achievement of Marx's theory ... The sociological treatment of historical and moral probelms, which Comte and after him, Spencer and Taine, had discussed and mapped, became a precise and concrete study only when the attack of militant Marxism made its conclusions a burning issue, and so made the search for evidence more zealous and the attention to method more intense.
— Isaiah Berlin Karl Marx 1967, [19]
The early sociology of Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) came about broadly as a reaction to Comte; writing after various developments in evolutionary biology, Spencer attempted (in vain) to reformulate the discipline in what we might now describe as socially Darwinistic terms. (Spencer was in actual fact a proponent of Lamarckism rather than Darwinism).
[edit] Tags:Biology,Enlightenment,Positivist,Society,Philosophy Of Science,Auguste Comte,Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès,French,Adolphe Quetelet,Political Philosophers,Social Contract,The Course In Positive Philosophy,A General View Of Positivism,Religion Of Humanity,Calendar Reform,Positivist Calendar,John Stuart Mill,Darwin,On The Origin Of Species,Secular Humanist,George Holyoake,Richard Congreve,George Eliot,Altruism,Social Evolution,Karl Marx,Communist,Utopian Socialist,Henri De Saint-simon,Secularisation,Hegelianism,Isaiah Berlin,Taine,Herbert Spencer,Socially Darwinistic,Lamarckism,Harriet Martineau, | |
| Other precursors | |
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Many other philosophers and academics were influential in the development of sociology, not least the Enlightenment theorists of social contract, and historians such as Adam Ferguson (1723–1816). For his theory on social interaction, Ferguson has himself been described as "the father of modern sociology"[20] Other early works to appropriate the term 'sociology' included A Treatise on Sociology, Theoretical and Practical by the North American lawyer Henry Hughes and Sociology for the South, or the Failure of Free Society[21] by the American lawyer George Fitzhugh. Both books were published in 1854, in the context of the debate over slavery in the antebellum US. The Study of Sociology by the English philosopher Herbert Spencer appeared in 1874. Lester Frank Ward, described by some as the father of American sociology, published Dynamic Sociology in 1883. Harriet Martineau, a Whig social theorist and the English translator of many of Comte's works, has been cited as the first female sociologist.
Various other early social historians and economists have gained recognition as classical sociologists, perhaps most notably Robert Michels (1876–1936), Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859), Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923) and Thorstein Veblen (1857–1926). The classical sociological texts broadly differ from political philosophy in the attempt to remain scientific, systematic, structural, or dialectical, rather than purely moral, normative or subjective. The new class relations associated with the development of Capitalism are also key, further distinguishing sociological texts from the political philosophy of the Renaissance and Enlightenment eras.
[edit] Tags:Sociologists,Capitalism,The Enlightenment,Political Philosophy,Adam Ferguson,Social Interaction,Henry Hughes,George Fitzhugh,Antebellum,Lester Frank Ward,Whig,Robert Michels,Alexis De Tocqueville,Vilfredo Pareto,Thorstein Veblen,Dialectical,Normative, | |
| Foundation of the academic discipline | |
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Classical theorists of sociology from the late 19th and early 20th centuries include Ludwig Gumplowicz (1838–1909), Ferdinand Tönnies (1855–1936), Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), Georg Simmel (1858–1918), Max Weber (1864–1920), and Karl Mannheim (1893–1947). Many of these figures did not consider themselves strictly 'sociologists' and regularly contributed to jurisprudence, economics, psychology, and philosophy.
Formal academic sociology began when Durkheim set up the first European department of sociology at the University of Bordeaux in 1895, publishing his Rules of the Sociological Method. In 1896, he established the journal L'Année Sociologique. Durkheim's seminal monograph, Suicide (1897), a case study of suicide rates amongst Catholic, Protestant and Jewish populations, distinguished sociological analysis from psychology or philosophy. It also marked a major contribution to the concept of structural functionalism.[22]
A course entitled "sociology" was in the United States taught under its own name for the first time in 1875 by William Graham Sumner, drawing upon the thought of Comte and Herbert Spencer rather than the work Durkheim was advancing in Europe.[23] In 1890, the oldest continuing sociology course in the United States began at the University of Kansas, lectured by Frank Blackmar. The Department of History and Sociology at the University of Kansas was established in 1891 [24][25] and the first full fledged independent university department of sociology was established in 1892 at the University of Chicago by Albion W. Small (1854–1926), who in 1895 founded the American Journal of Sociology.[26] American sociology arose on a broadly independent trajectory to European sociology. George Herbert Mead and Charles H. Cooley were influential in the development of symbolic interactionism and social psychology at the University of Chicago, whilst Lester Ward emphasised the central importance of the scientific method with the publication of Dynamic Sociology in 1883.
The first sociology department in the United Kingdom was founded at the London School of Economics in 1904. In 1919 a sociology department was established in Germany at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich by Max Weber, who had established a new antipositivist sociology. In 1920 a department was set up in Poland by Florian Znaniecki (1882–1958). The "Institute for Social Research" at the University of Frankfurt (later to become the "Frankfurt School" of critical theory) was founded in 1923.[27] Critical theory would take on something of a life of its own after WW2, influencing literary theory and the "Birmingham School" of cultural studies.
International cooperation in sociology began in 1893 when René Worms (1869–1926) founded the small Institut International de Sociologie, eclipsed by much larger International Sociological Association from 1949. In 1905 the American Sociological Association, the world's largest association of professional sociologists, was founded, and Lester F. Ward was selected to serve as the first President of the new society.
[edit] Tags:Economics,Psychology,Social Research,Ludwig Gumplowicz,Ferdinand Tönnies,Émile Durkheim,Georg Simmel,Max Weber,Karl Mannheim,Jurisprudence,University Of Bordeaux,Rules Of The Sociological Method,L'année Sociologique,Suicide,Catholic, | |
| The canon: Durkheim, Marx, Weber | |
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Vilfredo Pareto
Durkheim, Marx, and Weber are typically cited as the three principal architects of modern social science. The sociological "canon of classics" with Durkheim and Weber at the top owes in part to Talcott Parsons, who is largely credited with introducing both to American audiences.[28] Parsons' Structure of Social Action (1937) consolidated the American sociological tradition and set the agenda for American sociology at the point of its fastest disciplinary growth. In Parsons' canon, however, Vilfredo Pareto holds greater significance than either Marx or Simmel. His canon was guided by a desire to "unify the divergent theoretical traditions in sociology behind a single theoretical scheme, one that could in fact be justified by purely scientific developments in the discipline during the previous half century."[29] Whilst the secondary role Marx plays in early American sociology may be attributed to Parsons,[29] as well as to broader political trends,[30] the dominance of Marxism in European sociological thought had long since secured the rank of Marx alongside Durkheim and Weber as one of the three "classical" sociologists.[31]
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| 19th Century: From positivism to antipositivism | |
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The methodological approach toward sociology by early theorists was to treat the discipline in broadly the same manner as natural science. An emphasis on empiricism and the scientific method was sought to provide an incontestable foundation for any sociological claims or findings, and to distinguish sociology from less empirical fields such as philosophy. This perspective, called positivism, is based on the assumption that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge, and that such knowledge can come only from positive affirmation of theories through strict scientific and quantitative methods. Émile Durkheim was a major proponent of theoretically grounded empirical research,[32] seeking correlations to reveal structural laws, or "social facts". For him, sociology could be described as the "science of institutions, their genesis and their functioning".[33] Durkheim endeavoured to apply sociological findings in the pursuit of political reform and social solidarity. Today, scholarly accounts of Durkheim's positivism may be vulnerable to exaggeration and oversimplification: Comte was the only major sociological thinker to postulate that the social realm may be subject to scientific analysis in the same way as noble science, whereas Durkheim acknowledged in greater detail the fundamental epistemological limitations.[34][35]
Reactions against positivism began when German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) voiced opposition to both empiricism, which he rejected as uncritical, and determinism, which he viewed as overly mechanistic.[36] Karl Marx's methodology borrowed from Hegel dialecticism but also a rejection of positivism in favour of critical analysis, seeking to supplement the empirical acquisition of "facts" with the elimination of illusions.[37] He maintained that appearances need to be critiqued rather than simply documented. Marx nonetheless endeavoured to produce a science of society grounded in the economic determinism of historical materialism.[37] Other philosophers, including Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) and Heinrich Rickert (1863–1936) argued that the natural world differs from the social world because of those unique aspects of human society (meanings, signs, and so on) which inform human cultures.
At the turn of the 20th century the first generation of German sociologists formally introduced methodological antipositivism, proposing that research should concentrate on human cultural norms, values, symbols, and social processes viewed from a subjective perspective. Max Weber argued that sociology may be loosely described as a 'science' as it is able to identify causal relationships—especially among ideal types, or hypothetical simplifications of complex social phenomena.[38] As a nonpositivist, however, one seeks relationships that are not as "ahistorical, invariant, or generalizable"[39] as those pursued by natural scientists. Ferdinand Tönnies presented Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (lit. community and society) as the two normal types of human association. Tönnies drew a sharp line between the realm of conceptuality and the reality of social action: the first must be treated axiomatically and in a deductive way ('pure' sociology), whereas the second empirically and in an inductive way ('applied' sociology). Both Weber and Georg Simmel pioneered the Verstehen (or 'interpretative') approach toward social science; a systematic process in which an outside observer attempts to relate to a particular cultural group, or indigenous people, on their own terms and from their own point-of-view. Through the work of Simmel, in particular, sociology acquired a possible character beyond positivist data-collection or grand, deterministic systems of structural law. Relatively isolated from the sociological academy throughout his lifetime, Simmel presented idiosyncratic analyses of modernity more reminiscent of the phenomenological and existential writers than of Comte or Durkheim, paying particular concern to the forms of, and possibilities for, social individuality.[40] His sociology engaged in a neo-Kantian critique of the limits of perception, asking 'What is society?' in a direct allusion to Kant's question 'What is nature?'[41]
[edit] Tags:Antipositivism,Culture,Modernity,Institutions,Empiricism,Interpretative, | |
| 20th Century: Critical theory, postmodernism, and positivist revival | |
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In the early 20th century, sociology expanded in the U.S., including developments in both macrosociology, concerned with the evolution of societies, and microsociology, concerned with everyday human social interactions. Based on the pragmatic social psychology of George Herbert Mead (1863–1931), Herbert Blumer (1900–1987) and, later, the Chicago school, sociologists developed symbolic interactionism.[42] In the 1920s, György Lukács released History and Class Consciousness (1923), whilst a number of works by Durkheim and Weber were published posthumously. In the 1930s, Talcott Parsons (1902–1979) developed action theory, integrating the study of social order with the structural and voluntaristic aspects of macro and micro factors, while placing the discussion within a higher explanatory context of system theory and cybernetics. In Austria and later the U.S., Alfred Schütz (1899–1959) developed social phenomenology, which would later inform social constructionism. During the same period members of the Frankfurt school, such as Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) and Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), developed critical theory, integrating the historical materialistic elements of Marxism with the insights of Weber, Freud and Gramsci—in theory, if not always in name—often characterizing capitalist modernity as a move away from the central tenets of enlightenment.
During the Interwar period, sociology was undermined by totalitarian governments for reasons of ostensible political control. After the Russian Revolution, sociology was gradually "politicized, Bolshevisized and eventually, Stalinized" until it virtually ceased to exist in the Soviet Union.[43] In China, the discipline was banned with semiotics, comparative linguistics and cybernetics as "Bourgeois pseudoscience" in 1952, not to return until 1979.[44] During the same period, however, sociology was also undermined by conservative universities in the West. This was due, in part, to perceptions of the subject as possessing an inherent tendency, through its own aims and remit, toward liberal or left wing thought. Given that the subject was founded by structural functionalists; concerned with organic cohesion and social solidarity, this view was somewhat groundless (though it was Parsons who had introduced Durkheim to American audiences, and his interpretation has been criticized for a latent conservatism).[35]
In the mid-20th century there was a general—but not universal—trend for U.S.-American sociology to be more scientific in nature, due to the prominence at that time of action theory and other system-theoretical approaches. Robert K. Merton released his Social Theory and Social Structure (1949). By the turn of the 1960s, sociological research was increasingly employed as a tool by governments and businesses worldwide. Sociologists developed new types of quantitative and qualitative research methods. Paul Lazarsfeld founded Columbia University's Bureau of Applied Social Research, where he exerted a tremendous Tags:Research Methods,Qualitative,Lists,Linguistics,Linguistic, | |
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