SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES
CHAPTER 3
Sociological Theory
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Understanding complex phenomena (the impact of
industrialization on societies, how does racism
interact with capitalism, how do crime rates vary
with poverty…)
Factual research shows how things occur but
sociology does not just consist of collecting facts.
Why things happen?

Explanatory theories

Industrialization
 What
are the origins of and preconditions for
industrialization?
 Differences between societies industrialization
processes.
 Why is industrialization associated with changes in
forms of criminal punishment or in family structures and
marriage systems?
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Theories involve constructing abstract interpretations
that can be used to explain a wide variety of
empirical/factual situations.
A theory of industrialization is concerned with
identifying the main features that processes of
industrial development share in common and shows
which are of importance in explaining industrial
development.
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We can only develop valid theoretical explanations
if we can test them by means of factual research.
However, facts do not speak for themselves! Unless
they are guided by some knowledge of theory, they
are unable to explain the complexity of societies.

Theoretical thinking must respond to general
problems posed by the study of human social life
(including issues that are philosophical in nature).
Founders of Sociology

Systematic study of society – late 1700s and early
1800s.
 Enlightenment
 French
Revolution
 Industrial Revolution in Europe
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What is human nature?
Why is the society structured the way it is?
How and why do societies change?
Which events made sociological
perspective possible?

The Industrial Revolution
 Radically
transformed material conditons of life and
ways of making living.
 New social problems such as urban overcrowding, poor
sanitation and accompanying diseases, industrial
pollution.

French Revolution
 Marked
symbolic endpoint of the older European
agrarian regimes and absolute monarchies.
 Republican ideals of freedom, liberty and citizenship
rights came to the fore.
 Can be regarded as partly being the outcome of
European Enlightenment ideas.

Enlightenment (Age of Reason)
 Challenged
religious and traditional authorities
 Promoted philosophical and scientific notions of reason,
rationality and critical thinking as the key to progress in
human affairs.
 Saw the advancement of reliable knowledge in the
natural sciences, and as showing the way for the study
of social life.
Auguste Comte (1798-1857)
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

Invented the term “sociology”. First had “social
physics” in mind but it was taken.
A science of society that could explain the laws of
the social world just as natural science explained
functioning of the physical world.
Uncovering the laws that govern human society
could help shape our destiny and improve the
welfare of humanity.
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Sociology as a positive science.
Positivism: science should be concerned with
observable entities that are known directly to
experience.
On the basis of careful observation, one can infer
laws that explain the relationship between the
observed phenomena.
By understanding causal relationships between
events, scientists can predict future events.

Comte’s Law of Three Stages
 Human
efforts to understand the world have gone
through three stages:
 Theological
(religious ideas and the belief that society was
an expression of God’s will)
 Metaphysical (Renaissance, society came to be known in
natural not supernatural terms)
 Positive (application of scientific techniques to the social
world)
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Reconstruction of the society
Religion of humanity that would abandon faith and
dogma in favor of a scientific grounding (with
sociology at the heart of this new religion).
Inequalities produced by industrialization and the
threat they posed to social cohesion.
Solution? Production of a new moral consensus that
would regulate/hold together the society, despite
new patterns of inequality.
Canonical Sociology
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Marx (dynamics of the capitalist economy and
causes of social inequality)
Durkheim (character of industrial society and the
process of secularization)
Weber (emergence of capitalism and the
consequences of modern bureaucratic forms of
organization)
What is common in their concerns?


They were all concerned to understand what was
unique about modern societies and where they were
heading.
Good theories help us arrive at a deeper
understanding of societies and to explain the social
changes that affect us all.
Classical (Canonical) Sociologists

Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
Max Weber (1864-1920)

Why is classical sociology classical? (R.W. Connell)


 Who
are left out and why?
“Why Is Classical Theory Classical?”
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(1) Sociology arose out of the concerns and observations of
European colonial empires, which led to the concepts of
progress, evolution, and the primitive/modern contrast.
(2) For all the evils of this beginning, early sociology had at
least a central concern for gender and race, later forgotten.
Gender, sexuality, and race relations, which were core issues
for evolutionary sociology, were pushed to the margins in
the process of canon formation.
(3) These concerns broke down because of World War I,
with the shift of sociology’s center to the United States and
to concerns for inequality and disorder in urban society.
(4) Because this empirical work failed to legitimate itself, a
classical canon was adopted.
Harriet Martineau (1802-1876)
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
Today credited with
introducing sociology to
Britain through her
translation of Comte’s
Positive Philosophy.
Systematic study of the
American Society during
extensive travels throughout
the US, Society in America
(1837).
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When one studies a society, one must focus on all
key aspects (political, religious and social
institutions).
An analysis of a society must include an
understanding of women’s lives.


Sociological study of previously ignored issues such
as marriage, children, domestic and religious life
and race relations.
“The nursery, the boudoir and the kitchen are all
excellent schools in which to learn the morals and
manners of a people.”
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
Sociologists should do more than just observe, they
should also act in ways to benefit a society.
Proponent of women’s rights and emancipation of
slaves.
Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406)
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
Historical, sociological
and political economic
studies.
Muqaddimah
(Introduction, 1378)

Muqaddimah (Introduction, 1378)
 Criticized
existing historical approaches and methods
as dealing only with description.
 Claimed instead the discovery of a “new science of
social organization” or “science of society” capable of
getting at the underlying meaning of events.

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Devised a theory of social conflict based on
understanding the central characteristics of nomadic
and sedentary societies of his time.
Central to his theory was asabiyyah (group
feeling/solidarity).

Attempted to explain the rise and decline of
Maghribian and Arab states. Hence, studies the
process of state formation.
 Nomadic
Bedouin tribes – strong group feeling
 Sedentary town-dweller weak group feeling (internal
solidarity)
Emile Durkheim (1858 – 1917)


Saw sociology as a new
science that can elucidate
traditional philosophical
questions by examining
them in an empirical
manner.
Must study social life with
same objectivity as
natural sciences (Comte).

“Study social facts as things”
 Social
life could be analyzed as rigorously as objects or
events in the nature.

Durkheim’s themes
 Sociology
as an empirical science
 The rise of the individual and formation of a new social
order
 The sources and character of moral authority in society
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Sociology is the study of social facts.
Rather than applying sociological methods to the
study of individuals, sociology should examine social
facts that shape our actions as individuals (such as
the state of the economy or the influence of
religion)
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There is more to society than the actions and
interests of its individual members.
Social institutions and social forms (ie. social
movements, family) outlive the individuals who
inhabit them and have a reality of their own.
The “social” is a level of reality in its own right and
cannot be reduced to mere action nor to aggregate
of individual consciousnesses.
Society is more than the sum of its parts!

Social Facts
 Ways
of acting, thinking, feeling that are external to
individuals and have their own reality outside the lives
and perceptions of individual people.
 They exercise a coercive power over individuals (though
not recognized as coercive, people generally comply
with social facts freely, as if they are acting out of
choice).
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
People follow patterns that are general to their
society.
What if they don’t?
How do social facts constrain human action?
 Outright
punishment (crime)
 Social rejection (unacceptable behavior)
 Misunderstanding (misuse of language)

How can one study social facts?
 Hard
to observe directly;
 their properties must be revealed indirectly by
 analyzing
their effects
 considering attempts made at their expression (laws,
religious texts, written rules)

abandon prejudice and ideology (a mind free of
preconceived ideas and open to evidence.
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Changes transforming society
Social morality and solidarity
SOLIDARITY
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What holds the society together and keeps it from
descending into chaos
How individuals successfully integrate into social
groups
How individuals are regulated by a set of shared
values and customs
Division of Labor in Society
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An analysis of social change
The advent of industrial era meant the emergence
of a new type of solidarity
Mechanical solidarity
Organic solidarity
Mechanical Solidarity
 Traditional
cultures with a low division of labor
 Many members involved in similar occupations
 Bound by common experience and shared beliefs
 Strength of shared belief is repressive (community
punishes those who challenge conventional ways of life)

Grounded in consensus and similarity of belief.
Organic Solidarity
 Industrialization
and urbanizationlead to a growing
division of labor (breakdown of former form of
solidarity) in advanced societies
 Specialization of tasks
 Increasing social differentiation
 Held together by economic interdependence
 Recognition of the importance of others’ contributions

Economic reciprocity and mutual dependency
replace shared beliefs in creating social consensus.
Anomie
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Rapid social change gives rise to social difficulties
Disruptive effects on traditional lifestyles, morals,
religious beliefs and everyday patterns
Absence of new clear values
These unsettling conditions lead to anomie ( feelings
of aimlessness, dread and despair provoked by
modern social life)
Lack of meaning in the absence of traditional moral
controls and standards (religion) due to modern
social development
Suicide: A Study in Sociology (1897)

A calculated and provocative decision with two
main purposes:
 Establish
sociology as a recognized social science
 Suicide,
an act explained by individual psychology, is
actually a social fact.
 First ever Professor of Sociology in an academic
establishment (Sorbonne, The University of Paris, 1913)
 Show
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social dangers of unbridled individualism
Does not deny that psychological distress prompts
taking of own life, however, social conditions
provide the suicidal disposition.
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Even though individuals see themselves as exercising
free will and choice, their behaviors are socially
patterned and shaped.
Even a highly personal act like suicide is influenced
by what happens in the social world.
First sociological analysis, previous explanations
resorted to race, climate or mental disorder to
explain likelihood of suicide.
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Suicide is a social fact that can be explained by
other social facts.
Suicide rate is more than aggregate of individual
suicides – a phenomenon with patterned properties.
Certain categories of people are more likely to
commit suicide.
 Men
– women
 Protestant – Catholic
 Single – married
 Wealthy - poor
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Lower suicide rates during times of war.
Higher rates during times of economic change or
instability.
There are social forces external to the individual
that affect suicide rates.
 Social
solidarity
 Social integration
 Social regulation
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People who are strongly integrated into the social
groups, and whose desires and aspirations are
regulated by social norms are less likely to commit
suicide.
Suicide types according to the presence or absence
of integration and regulation:
 Egoistic
 Anomic
 Altruistic
 Fatalistic

Egoistic Suicide
 low
integration in society
 individual is isolated
 ties to a group are weakened or broken
 Religion
 Marriage
 Wartime

Anomic Suicide
 Lack
of social regulation
 People rendered normless as a result of rapid change
or instability
 Lack of a reference point for norms and desires
 Loss of balance between people’s circumstances and
their desires.
 Economic
 Divorce
upheaval

Altruistic Suicide
 Individual
is over-integrated
 Social bonds too strong
 Society valued more than self
 Mechanical solidarity prevails
 Kamikaze
pilots
 Suicide bombers

Fatalistic Suicide
 Little
contemporary relevance
 Individual over-regulated by society
 Oppression results in feeling of powerlessness before
society or fate
 Dictatorships
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Suicide rates vary between societies but show
regular patterns within societies over time.
Durkheim took this as evidence that there are
consistent social forces that influence suicide rates.
 An examination of suicide rates reveals how
general social patterns can be detected within
individual actions.

Critical points
 Uncritical
use of official statistics
 Dismissal of non-social influences
 Classifying all types of suicide together