Sociology

Is the systematic study of social behavior and human groups.

It focuses primarily on the influence of social relationships upon and behavior and on how societies are established and changed.(Schaefer, 1989:5)

The Sociological Perspective

This is a distinctive way of examining human interactions. Peter Berger (1963) describes the sociological perspective as seeing the general in particular.

The Sociological Imagination

It is the ability to break ourselves free from our particular circumstances and see our social world in a new light. Three components that form the sociological imagination are: History – how society came

to be and how it is changing and how history is being made in it.

Biography – the nature of “human nature” in a society; what kind of people inhabit a particular society.

Social Structure – how the various institutional orders in a society operate which ones are dominant and how are they held together and how they might be changing

A sociological perspective will help us to understand this world and the future it is likely to hold for us. It helps us in the following ways: An improved understanding

of a given set of social circumstances often gives us a better chance of controlling them.

Sociology provides the means of increasing our cultural sensitivities.

Critical sociological thinking compels us to investigate the consequences of adopting particular policy programs that benefit the greater majority.

It provides self-enlightenment, offering groups and individuals an increased opportunity to alter the conditions of their own lives.

History of Sociology Auguste Comte

(1798-1857) Who coined the term sociology in 1838 to describethis new way of thinking

applying the scientific approach, which was first used to study the physical world to the study of society.

favored positivism, defined as a way of understanding based on science; he believed that society is governed by invariable laws just as the physical world operates according to the laws of nature.

18th & 19th centuries striking informations changed European society. Three changes were essentially important in the development of Sociology: The rise of factory-based

industrial economy

The explosive growth of cities

The new ideas about democracy and political rights

Discipline of Sociology was born in England, France, and Germany – where changes were greatest.

20th century Sociology became an academic discipline in the United States, strongly influenced by Comte’s ideas.

The Major Sociological

Thinkers

Karl MarxEmile DurkheimMax Weber

Marx's theories about society, economics and politics, which are collectively known as Marxism, hold that all societies progress through the dialectic of class struggle. He was heavily critical of the current socio-economic form of society, capitalism.

Under socialism, he argued that society would be governed by the working class in what he called the "dictatorship of the proletariat", the "workers state" or "workers' democracy".

He believed that socialism would, in its turn, eventually be replaced by a stateless, classless society called pure communism.

Along with believing in the inevitability of socialism and communism, Marx actively fought for the former's implementation, arguing that both social theorists and underprivileged people should carry out organised revolutionary action to topple capitalism and bring about socio-economic change.

Emile Durkheim founder of modern sociology; introduced the theory of Structural/Functionalism early in his career, and this theory would prove as a foundation for other principles as well.

He drew in theory from the Conflict ideologies of Karl Marx (1818 - 1883), and of Auguste Compte (1798 - 1857) who is considered the Father of sociology.

The Durkheim Era contributed in a major way to expand the perspective of the Social discipline by taking it to a new level when he applied scientific and empirical research.

the idea of the whole being greater and different than the sum of its parts,

anomie or normlessness,the concept that religion is equal to society and the sacred and the profane (Collins, 1994).

Max Weber  argued against abstract theory, and he favored an approach to sociological inquiry that generated its theory from rich, systematic, empirical, historical research.

This approach required, first of all, an examination of the relationships between, and the respective roles of, history and sociology in inquiry.

He argued that sociology was to develop concepts for the analysis of concrete phenomena, which would allow sociologists to then make generalizations about historical phenomena.

He contended that understanding, or verstehen, was the proper way of studying social phenomena. Derived from the interpretive practice known as hermeneutics, the method of verstehen strives to understand the meanings that human beings attribute to their experiences, interactions, and actions.

Weber's greatest contribution to the conceptual arsenal of sociology is known as the ideal type. The ideal type is basically a theoretical model constructed by means of a detailed empirical study of a phenomenon. An ideal type is an intellectual construct that a sociologist may use to study historical realities by means of their similarities to, and divergences from, the model. Note that ideal types are not utopias or images of what the world ought to look like.