Two Myths:
Origins of Modern Sociology
Was It Men or Math?
Origins
• 1800 – no such word as Sociology
• 1900 –Sociology known to intellectuals
• 2000 – Around 25,000 Sociology majors
graduate in US in 2000
• Where’d Sociology come from?
– Determining origins always problematic
• E.g., origins of Civil War, hip-hop, Christian dogma
• Answers often more important for how they
work now than for accuracy
Competing Stories Concerning
the Origins of Sociology
• First origin myth:
– Great 19th – 20th century thinkers responding
to 18th and 19th century events
• Marx, Weber, Durkheim in particular
• The conventional story
• Second origin myth
– Statistically oriented 19th century analysts
interpreting contemporary data from
government and other sources
• Not the conventional story
Heavy Duty Warning
► Much
of the following material is “deeper”
than usual (at least for this course)
► We’ll be looking at some of the ideas of the
masters
► Good stuff!!!
Myth 1: Factors Stimulating
Development of Sociology
•
Three general events / trends in
European history
1. French Revolution (1789 – 1799) and
aftermath
2. Urbanization
3. Rise of industry and capitalism
•
Institutionalization of science and
modernization of universities
Myth 1: The Challenges
• Dramatic events of 19th century challenged
intellectuals to explain those events
• Dramatic events of 19th century challenged
activists to do something
Most important early sociologists
did both explanation and
activism
French Revolution and Aftermath
• Revolution itself started 1789, ran to 1799.
Consequences lasted much longer
• "Death knell" of the Ancien Regime
– Ancien regime – the old way of organizing social life,
especially of governing, especially Europe pre-1789
– Death was protracted; not really complete until WWI
– Long death illustrates a principle of social
movements: strong social movements tend to
generate countermovements
• Napoleon overthrew revolutionary govt,
eventually restructured much of Europe
By 1812 Napoleon Dominated
Europe
Why We’re Doing This History
► Hopefully
you have learned or will learn
about the general importance of the
phenomena we’re discussing
 Along with colonialism largely responsible for
social, economic, and political world of today
► Sociology’s
appearance small potatoes
compared to other things
 Does illustrate widespread consequences
 Sociologists care about where we came from !!!
Before the French Revolution :
The Enlightenment
• Era in European intellectual history from
Glorious Revolution in England (1688) to French
Revolution (1789)
• Emphasis was on powers of human reason
– Not just in science, but also ethics, aesthetics, and
social policy
• Great belief in the “idea of progress”
– Feeling that progress in all things was here and was
here to stay
Gallery of Enlightenment Thinkers
Enlightenment and
French Revolution
• French Revolution “should” have been the
successful end of 100 yrs of enlightenment
– Instead, for intellectuals marked uneasy end to
optimism of the Enlightenment
• The Law of Progress: every day, in every way
things are getting better because we’re smarter
– In France seemed every day things were getting
snarfed up
– Guillotines and worse of First Republic were hardly
enlightened
• Ambivalence toward Napoleon’s effort to be
“enlightened despot”
French Revolution
Migration
• Traditional European feudal society agrarian,
based in the countryside
• In 1800s people were leaving countryside
– Mostly going to cities
– So what?
• Ferdinand Toennies [Tönnies] terms
– Gemeinschaft – traditional, rural society; community
– Gesellschaft – modern, urban society; lacking sense
of community
– Terms now used by many intellectuals
Industrialization /
Rise of Capitalism
• Industrial Revolution (1750ff) changed
economies
– May not have had to be capitalist, but it was
– Industrial Revolution was largely responsible
for urbanization
• Capitalism's rise preceded the 19th
century, but it took over then
Review
• Events most important for development
of modern sociology
• Ancien regime and its lengthy demise
• Consequences of French Revolution
• Consequences of Napoleon
• Enlightenment
• Gemeinschafft and Gesellschaft
• Industrial Revolution
Marx, Weber, Durkheim
• Thinkers today usually considered
“founders” of modern sociology are …
– Karl Marx (Prussian – English) 1818 - 1883
– Max Weber (Prussian – German) 1864 - 1920
– Emile Durkheim (French) 1859 – 1917
• Not always been considered “Big Three”
• All three are macrosociologists
– American microsociologist George H. Mead
sometimes added
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
• Huge impact on the world
– No doubt most of any PhD
– More than most people of any kind
– At one time, 1 / 3rd of world under
“Marxist” governments
• Great scholar
– “Biggie” in sociology, philosophy,
political science, economics, history
• Impact without army, wealth, or political position
– His importance today (and those Marxist
governments!) reminds us of the power of ideas
Some of Marx’s Ideas
• A theory of capitalism
– “Explained” past, present, and future of economic
organization
– Discussion of globalization sounds very current
• A theory of revolution
– Who would rebel, when they would rebel, and why
• 19th and 20th centuries were centuries of
revolution
– Particularly colonies shedding “masters”
– Ironically, countries that did rebel often were not ones
his theory expected (e.g., Russia and China)
• Did not separate his science from his activism
Max Weber 1864 - 1920
• MOCKS VAY-burr
• Born into comfort,
very well educated
• Visits Tuskegee ~1904
• Sees world in all its shades of gray
• Fundamental question: How did Germany
get to be the way it is (pre-WWI)?
– Idiographic question approached nomothetically
Weber and Rationality I
•
•
W. argued increasing rationality in social
life was key to development of Europe in
the centuries after fall of Rome
Weber’s three forms of rationality
1. Knowledge of how to achieve desired ends
2. Predictability and regularity in complex
systems, especially the market and
government
•
With markets, producing surplus is sensible
3. Active efforts to master or change the world
Max Weber & Rationality II
• That is, Weber argued Europe owed its
social and economic structure to
1) cause and effect knowledge
2) predictable markets and governments
3) norms encouraging actors, individual and
corporate, to take advantage of knowledge
and predictability
Max Weber & Rationality III
• Results of rationality were dramatic
– Better life chances
– Fabulous economic productivity
– Unprecedented military might
Max Weber & Rationality IV
• Weber argued you can’t eliminate
emotional behavior
• Even apparently rationality-driven settings
have emotional sides
– For example, in bureaucracies, leadership
Max Weber & Rationality V
• Bureaucracies:
– better ways of organizing large scale efforts
than any previous way
– minimize individuality among bureaucrats
– minimize emotional behavior
– can be “iron cages” in which we accomplish
a great deal, but at great emotional cost
Max Weber & Rationality VI
Forms of Authority/Leadership/ Followership
1. Traditional leadership: we follow leader
because always have
– e.g., in hereditary monarchy
2. Rational-legal leadership: we follow leader
because rules or laws tell us to
– basis for bureaucracies
3. Charismatic leadership: follow leader because
we like leader and want to please him or her
– Such authority is non-rational
Weber Review
•
•
•
•
•
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Development of Europe since Rome
Types of rationality
Predictable markets
Types of authority
Charisma
Emotion
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
• Sociology is study of “social facts”
• Social facts – things outside individual with
power to shape individual’s behavior regardless
of his or her will
• Being external to the individual, social facts exist
regardless of whether any particular person lives
or dies
• Social facts are not properties of the human
mind, therefore not part of subject matter of
psychology
– Therefore we needed a new science
Durkheim – Social Facts
• Examples of social facts:
– Traffic laws
– Dating rules (e.g., one
date at a time, boys
initiate, boys pay, etc.)
– Obligations that come
with being a parent, child,
citizen, etc.
Durkheim and Suicide
• D’s book Suicide provided example of
sociological research on presumably
psychological topic
• If suicide purely personal, different parts of
France wouldn’t have same rates year
after year; but they do
• D. argues social cause of diffs in suicide
rates is diffs in levels of social integration
DIGRESSION:
Social Integration
• Integration : bringing things together
• Differentiation : making things different
or separate
• Society : a collection of separate people
who hang together
– E Pluribus Unum
Hobbesian Problem of Order
• HOW IS SOCIETY POSSIBLE?
– Why is human life NOT a war of all against
all? Why
is not
"… the life of man solitary,
poor, nasty, brutish, and
short"?
Thomas Hobbes (1588 - 1679)
Durkheim and Social Solidarity
• Social integration – bringing individuals
and groups together; also, keeping them
together
• Durkheim called it social solidarity; social
integration is modern term
• For some sociologists, understanding
creation and maintenance of social
integration is most important issue in
sociology
– Hobbesian problem of order
Sources of Social Integration
• Two Sources / Types of Social
Integration
– Sentiment – feelings of belonging together
– Interdependence – needing each other
Durkheim:
Social Integration & Suicide
• Durkheim: suicide rates reflect
problems with social integration
– Not appropriate levels of social interaction
– Not appropriate levels of social regulation of
individual behavior
• Anomie – situation when there are no
rules, the rules are unclear, or the
rules aren’t enforced
Social Differentiation
• TWO UBIQUITOUS FORMS OF SOCIAL
DIFFERENTIATION
► Division of labor – the distribution of
tasks among members of a society
► Gender – differences in the
treatment, behavior, and lives of men
and women
Durkheim Review
•
•
•
•
•
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Social facts
Integration vs differentiation
Hobbesian problem of order
Integration and suicide
Anomie
Division of labor