Early Thinkers and Differing Views on the Status Quo
Sociologist Accomplishments and
Key Concepts and Ideas
Contributions to Sociology
Auguste
Comte
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Harriet
Martineau
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Herbert
Spencer
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The Founder of Sociology
Coined the term “sociology”
Social statics (forces for social
order & stability) and social
dynamics (forces for conflict
& change).
Law of Three Stages: 1)
Theological
(religion/supernatural), 2)
Metaphysical (abstract
philosophical speculation), 3)
Scientific (systematic
observation, experimentation,
comparison, and historical
analysis).
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First female sociologist
35 books and many essays
Earned enough money from
her books and her works to be
able to live comfortably
Translated works from
Auguste Comte
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Evolutionary perspective on
social order and social change.
Theory of Evolution
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Philosophy – positivism—belief
that the world can best be
understood through scientific
inquiry.
Two dimensions – (1)
Methodological (scientific
knowledge); (2) Social and Political
(predict the best policies)
The study of society must be
scientific
He urged sociologists to employ
systematic observation,
experimentation, and comparative
historical analysis as their methods
Progression through the three stages
created the basic law of social
dynamics and when couple with the
laws of statics, created the new
science of sociology, which could
bring about positive social change.
She believes that thorough societal
analysis was necessary to
understand women’s status
Feminist
When studying society, focus on all
its aspects, including key political,
religious, and social institutes
Sufferers – disabled, poor, children,
and women.
Herbert Spencer depicted society as
a system, a whole made up of
interrelated parts.
He also set forth an evolutionary
theory of historical development.
Social Darwinism is Spencer’s
application of evolutionary notions
and the concept of survival of the
fittest to the social world.
Emile
Durkheim
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Karl Marx
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Significant contribution to
Sociology (especially in
Sociological Imagination)
Founding figure of the
functionalist theoretical
tradition
The Rules of Sociological
Method (Work)
Societies are built on social
facts (patterned ways of
acting, thinking, and feeling
that control each person)
The Division of Labor in
Society (Work)
Anomie – a condition in
which social control becomes
ineffective as a result of the
loss of shared values and of a
sense of purpose in society.
Suicide (Work)
German economist and
philosopher
The Role of Class Conflict:
Karl Marx focused his search
for the basic principles of
history on the economic
environments in which
societies develop.
Marx’s theory depends on the
clash of contradictions and the
creative of new, more
advanced structures out of
these clashes.
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Emile Durkheim was concerned
with social order, social solidarity;
distinguishing between mechanical
and organic solidarity.
Societies held together by strong
traditions, shared moral beliefs, and
values.
People became interdependent on
one another
Rapid social change – produces
Strains in society – causing a
breakdown in traditional
organization, values, and authority.
Sociology should be a science based
on observation and the systematic
study of social facts rather than on
individual characteristics or traits.
Strain, Social Facts, Anomie
He believed that society is divided
into those who own the means of
producing wealth and those who do
not, giving rise to class conflict
(struggle b/w the capitalist class &
the working class)
Capitalist (bourgeoisie) own and
control the means of production
Working Class (proletariat – those
who must sell their labour because
they have no other means to earn a
livelihood)
Capitalists control and exploits the
masses of struggling workers by
paying less than the value of their
labour, which causes the workers to
feel alienation—a feeling of
Powerlessness and estrangement
from other people and from oneself.
Marx predicted the working class
would be aware of this exploitation,
other throw the capitalist, and
establish a free and classless
society.
Max Weber
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The Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism, Economy
and Society, Methodology of
the Social Sciences.
Founder of Modern Sociology,
Historian, and an Economist.
Weber’s idea has been
incorporated into the concept
of sociological imagination.
Emphasized the goal of valuefree inquiry and the necessity
of understanding how others
see the world.
Was aware of women’s issues
than many other scholars of his
day.
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Georg Simmel
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He formed formal sociology,
an approach that focuses
attention on the universal
recurring social forms that
underlie the varying content of
social interaction.
He referred to these forms as
the “geometry of social life.”
He also distinguished between
the forms of social interaction
and the content of social
interaction in different
contexts.
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Weber emphasized that sociology
should be value free—that is,
research should be conducted in a
scientific manner and should
exclude the researcher’s personal
values and economic interests (no
bias).
Weber said that a critical aspect of
the sociological enterprise is the
study of the intentions, values,
beliefs, and attitudes that underlie
people’s behaviour.
He used the word Verstehen
(understanding or insight) in
describing his approach and
contributed his notions of the ideal
type and a value-free sociology.
Rational bureaucracy, rather than
class struggle, was the most
significant factor in determining the
social relations among people in
industrial societies.
Society was patterned
interactions among members of a
group.
Simmel conceives of each
particular social type as being
cast by the specific reactions and
expectations of others.
The type becomes what he is
through his relations with others
who assign him a particular
position and expect him to behave
in specific ways.
His characteristics are seen as
attributes of the social structure.
He analyzed how social interactions
vary depending on the size of the
social group. Interaction patterns
differed between a dyad, a social
group with two members, and a
triad, a social group with three
members.
The “Chicago
School”
Symbolic Interactionist, Focus on
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human and social structures; use of
quantitative methods in
criminology; the work of Frederic
E. Clements.
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Reductionism (the practice of
analyzing a complex phenomenon,
especially a mental, social, or
biological phenomena); Social
Control Theory.
--- American Sociology: In the
United States, sociology and the
modern university system arose
together.
The first department of sociology
was established at the University of
Chicago in 1893, and Chicago
served as a "social laboratory" at the
beginning of the century.
Midcentury sociologists crafted
survey techniques and refined
models of society.
"New breed" sociologists in the
1960s and 1970s refined Marxism
and established new research
approaches and perspectives.