Sociology 1 - Introduction
Origins of sociology
Auguste Comte (1798-1857);
Three Stages of understanding society
1. Theological stage
– Thoughts about the world were guided by religion
– People regarded society as an expression of god’s will
2. Metaphysical stage
– People understood society as a natural rather than unnatural
phenomenon
– Thomas Hobbes; society reflected a selfish human nature instead of a
reflection of God
3. Scientific stage
– Applying scientific approach to the study of society
– Positivism: a means to understand the world based on science
– Society conforms to never changing laws
Emile Durkheim – LE SUICIDE
Regulation
- Cultural human desires need to be regulated by something external
- Anomic Suicide: too little regulation, when not functioning well, humans are in state
of anomy
- Fatalistic Suicide: too much regulation, leads to state of fatalism
Integration
- Society needs to provide for cohesion and integration among its members
- Egoistic Suicide: too little integration, if society is too much dissolved and cohesion
is lacking, individuals feel alone and socially isolated
- Altruistic Suicide: too much integration, individual dissolves into society in which
individual offers life for society
,Societal Background
- Society was born out of massive social transformation; The 1789 French Revolution
and the industrial revolution were dissolved forms of social organization
1. Industrial economy
• Birth of capitalism
• Home manufacturing to factory
• Home fields – waterpower – stem power – large machines – factories
• Because of the development of the machines and factories, people became part
of large industrial work forces instead of working from home.
• The new industrial economy resulted in great poverty.
• The progress of new machines was also the breakdown of any kind of society or
social order as we previously knew it.
2. Growth of cities
• Pull factors of the factories
• Push factors of the countryside
• Landowners fenced of more and more ground, turning farms into grazing lands
for sheep; for the wool in textile mills
• Forced countryside farmers to the cities in search for work in the factories
• Villages were abandoned and factory towns turn into large cities
• Widespread of social problems; poverty, disease, pollution, crime, homelessness
• Because factories attracted a lot of people in need for work, large cities grew
around them.
3. Political Change
• Divine legitimation: royalty claim to rule by ‘divine right’
• Economic development and rapid growth of cities leads to political change
• Shift in focus on people’s moral obligations to be royal to their ruler to the idea
that society is a product of individual self-interest
• Key phrases in the new political climate: individual liberty and individual rights
• Because of this new capitalistic society, the idea emerged that society was a
product of individual self-interest rather than moral obligations. A new political
climate emerged that focused on individual rights and freedom.
, 4. Social revolution
• Ferdinand Teonnies: Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft
– Modern world as the progressive loss of Gemeinschaft
– Industrial revolution fostered individualism and business-like emphasis on
facts and efficiency
– Societies gradually became rootless and impersonal
– Kinship, virtue, loyalty -> instrumental, self-interest
– Collectivism -> individualism
Gemeinschaft Gesellschaft
– Families lived in rural towns and – Modern world turned societies
villages inside out
– Tightly integrated into a slow- – Most people live among strangers
moving, hardworking way of life – Ignore those who passed on the
– Before telephones and television, street
families and communities – Trust is hard to come by
entertained themselves – People tend to put their personal
– Communicating by letters needs ahead of group loyalty
– Inevitable conflicts and tensions – Essentially separated in spite of
characterized past communities uniting factors
– Teonnies: traditional ties of
gemeinschaft bound people of
communities together
– Essentially united in spite of all
separating factors
* Ferdinand Teonnies: a German sociologies came up with the following idea, because of the
new social organization, Gemeinschaft (a tightly integrated human community) declined and
made place for gesellschaft (the pursuit of self -interest, separation and individualism)
,A Short tour of Theory
What is sociological theory?
- General frameworks of explanation linking phenomena in the social world.
Robert K. Merton
Grand Theories:
– theoretical systems aimed at explaining all social phenomena in one theory
– abstract thinking rather than empirical thinking
– Marxist Conflict Theory, Parsonian structural-functionalist theory
Middle-range Theories
– Theories grounded in empirical reality
– Smaller theories, starting from specific and testable hypotheses
– Eventually abstracting from the specificities of the context to arrive at abstract and
generally applicable theories
– Reference group theory, social control theory, anomy theory
• Three major ways of thinking that have shaped sociology: classical, new and emerging
perspective
• Classical Perspective:
– Macro-level; functionalism, conflict
– Micro-level; Social action
Functionalist perspective
- A framework for building theory that visualizes society as a complex system whose
parts work together to promote solidarity and stability
- Our lives are guided by social structure: relatively stable patterns of social behaviour
- gives shape to the family, directs people to exchange greetings on the street
- leads us to understand social structure in terms of its social function: consequence
for the operation of society
- all social structures contribute to the operations of society
Herbert Spencer
- compared society to organisms of the human body
- body and society both have interdependent elements which contributes to
the survival of the entire organism
- various social structures are interdependent working in concert to preserve
society
- society as a system
- components with a function
,Talcott Parsons
- Structural-functional perspective
- Organizes sociological observations by indentifying various structures of
society and investigating the functions of each one
- Saw society as a cohesive system with specific need that are to be fulfilled by its
subsystems
- 4 different functions need to be met for the system to survive and work
adequately ‘AGIL’
1. Adapt
• Society needs to adapt to the wider environment
• This environment is always changing
• Society needs to have a subsystem devised to change society, so it adapts to that
changed environment
• Subsystem responsible: Economy
2. Goal Attainment
• Society needs to have a subsystem which sets clear goals for the society to move
towards and make sure these goals are met
• Subsystem responsible: Politics
3. Integration
• A society needs to have a common norm and value system, having all individuals
attuned to each other, if it wants to remain together
• Subsystem responsible: The legal system, by maintaining the legal order, people
are led to conform to the same laws which leads to integration
4. Latency
• Closely connected to integration
• Latency ≈ latent pattern management
• The need to have the norms and values of society being transmitted to the next
generation – tradition
• Can be connected to socialization
• Subsystems responsible: family, education, religion
Robert K. Merton
- The consequences of any social pattern are like to differ for various members of
society
- Conventional families may provide crucial support for the development of
children but they also confer privileges while limited the opportunities for
women
- People rarely perceive all the functions of a social structure
- Manifest functions: the recognized and intended consequence of any social pattern
- Latent functions: consequences that are largely unrecognized and unintended
- Example: Functions of higher education
§ Manifest: providing people with information and skills to perform job
effectively
, § Latent: a chance to meet potential partners at university
- Social Dysfunction
- Not all the effects of any social structure turn out to be useful
- Any social patters undesirable consequences for the operations of society
- People may well disagree about what is useful or harmful
- Example: Higher education
§ Some say higher education promotes left-wing thinking and threatens
traditional values
§ Others say higher education is dysfunctional for conferring further
privileges on the wealthy while poorer families find a university
course beyond their financial reach
Critiques on functionalism
- Social patterns vary from place to place and change over time
- Functionalism overlooks social problems: inequality based on social class, race,
ethnicity and gender, divisions that may generate considerate tension and conflict
- Functionalism focuses on stability at the expense of conflict and change
Conflict perspective
- A framework for building theory that visualizes society as an arena of inequality that
generates conflict and change
- Society is an arena of struggle
- Highlights division based on inequality
- Rather than social structures promoting the operation of society as a whole, social
structures typically benefit some people while depriving others
- Rich/poor
- White/black
- Men/women
- Role of sociologists to not only research but strive for change
- Marx:
§ Did not seek to meerly understand
§ “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways;
the point however is to change it”
Critiques on Conflict perspective
- glosses over how shared values or interdependence generate unity among society
- conflict approach pursues political goals -> activism
- not objectively scientific anymore
- neglect of order and cohesion
,Social-Action perspective
- What about people’s personal views and motivation?
- Action theory starts with the ways in which people orientate themselves to each
other and how they try to do so based on meanings
- A micro theory that focuses on how actors assemble social meanings
Max Weber
- Emphasized the need to understand a setting from the people in it
- Emphasizes how human meanings and actions shaped society
- Societies differ primarily in terms of the ways their members think about the world
- Ideas have transforming power
- Idealistic approach:
- Contrasted and compared ideal types:
§ An abstract statement of the essential (sometimes exaggerated)
characteristics of any social phenomenon.
§ Explored religion by contrasting the ideal ‘Hindu’ with the ideal
‘Protestant’
§ These models describe no actual individuals thus then contrasted with
actual, empirical forms found in reality
George Herbert
- Symbolic Interactionism
- A theoretical framework that visualizes society as the product of the
everyday interactions of people doing things together
- Herbert looked at how we assembled our sense of self over time based on social
experience
- Meanings originate/change through social interactions
- Society arises as a shared reality that its members construct as they interact
with each other
- The study of everyday life
- Sociology must proceed with this view through an intimate familiarity with
every-day real life events and not through abstract social theory
The Big Debate
- Do we make social life or does social life make us?
- Which came first: society or the individual?
- Determinism or volunterism
- Structure or Agency
, Sociology 2 – Societies
- What is a society?
- People who interact in a defined space and share a certain organizational
structure and culture
- Society at various levels: subgroups and subculture
Changing patterns of society – Sociocultural Evolution (Lenski)
1. Hunting and gathering societies
• Simple technology for hunting animals and gathering vegetation
• Small organization
- Small nomadic group (25-40)
- Rudimentary / basic labour divisions
§ Men- hunt
§ Women- gather
§ Young & old- do what they can
- Everyone is equal – very little class division
- Prestige, charismatic leadership -> no greater material rewards, have the
same responsibilities as everyone else
• Religion
- Forces of nature
• Struggle for survival? Sahlin disagrees
Marshall Sahlins
- Hunter-gatherers were the original affluent societies
- They took the chill road to affluence
§ Desire little, produce just enough
§ The society with the best worktime-leisuretime ratio
- Hesitant towards transition to less affluent type society
§ Population pressure theory, triangle with sides; population
size, food sources, labour method
§ Environmental conditions -> population began to grow -> food
sources deplete fast -> change of labour method to cope
§ Sparked the establishment of the next type of society
2. Horticultural and pastoral societies
• Technology
- Horticultural
§ Technology based on hand tools to cultivate plants
§ Hoe & digging stick
- Pastoralism
§ Technology based on domestication of animals
• Worst mistake in human history?
- Social inequality intensified
- Families who produced more food had more power
Origins of sociology
Auguste Comte (1798-1857);
Three Stages of understanding society
1. Theological stage
– Thoughts about the world were guided by religion
– People regarded society as an expression of god’s will
2. Metaphysical stage
– People understood society as a natural rather than unnatural
phenomenon
– Thomas Hobbes; society reflected a selfish human nature instead of a
reflection of God
3. Scientific stage
– Applying scientific approach to the study of society
– Positivism: a means to understand the world based on science
– Society conforms to never changing laws
Emile Durkheim – LE SUICIDE
Regulation
- Cultural human desires need to be regulated by something external
- Anomic Suicide: too little regulation, when not functioning well, humans are in state
of anomy
- Fatalistic Suicide: too much regulation, leads to state of fatalism
Integration
- Society needs to provide for cohesion and integration among its members
- Egoistic Suicide: too little integration, if society is too much dissolved and cohesion
is lacking, individuals feel alone and socially isolated
- Altruistic Suicide: too much integration, individual dissolves into society in which
individual offers life for society
,Societal Background
- Society was born out of massive social transformation; The 1789 French Revolution
and the industrial revolution were dissolved forms of social organization
1. Industrial economy
• Birth of capitalism
• Home manufacturing to factory
• Home fields – waterpower – stem power – large machines – factories
• Because of the development of the machines and factories, people became part
of large industrial work forces instead of working from home.
• The new industrial economy resulted in great poverty.
• The progress of new machines was also the breakdown of any kind of society or
social order as we previously knew it.
2. Growth of cities
• Pull factors of the factories
• Push factors of the countryside
• Landowners fenced of more and more ground, turning farms into grazing lands
for sheep; for the wool in textile mills
• Forced countryside farmers to the cities in search for work in the factories
• Villages were abandoned and factory towns turn into large cities
• Widespread of social problems; poverty, disease, pollution, crime, homelessness
• Because factories attracted a lot of people in need for work, large cities grew
around them.
3. Political Change
• Divine legitimation: royalty claim to rule by ‘divine right’
• Economic development and rapid growth of cities leads to political change
• Shift in focus on people’s moral obligations to be royal to their ruler to the idea
that society is a product of individual self-interest
• Key phrases in the new political climate: individual liberty and individual rights
• Because of this new capitalistic society, the idea emerged that society was a
product of individual self-interest rather than moral obligations. A new political
climate emerged that focused on individual rights and freedom.
, 4. Social revolution
• Ferdinand Teonnies: Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft
– Modern world as the progressive loss of Gemeinschaft
– Industrial revolution fostered individualism and business-like emphasis on
facts and efficiency
– Societies gradually became rootless and impersonal
– Kinship, virtue, loyalty -> instrumental, self-interest
– Collectivism -> individualism
Gemeinschaft Gesellschaft
– Families lived in rural towns and – Modern world turned societies
villages inside out
– Tightly integrated into a slow- – Most people live among strangers
moving, hardworking way of life – Ignore those who passed on the
– Before telephones and television, street
families and communities – Trust is hard to come by
entertained themselves – People tend to put their personal
– Communicating by letters needs ahead of group loyalty
– Inevitable conflicts and tensions – Essentially separated in spite of
characterized past communities uniting factors
– Teonnies: traditional ties of
gemeinschaft bound people of
communities together
– Essentially united in spite of all
separating factors
* Ferdinand Teonnies: a German sociologies came up with the following idea, because of the
new social organization, Gemeinschaft (a tightly integrated human community) declined and
made place for gesellschaft (the pursuit of self -interest, separation and individualism)
,A Short tour of Theory
What is sociological theory?
- General frameworks of explanation linking phenomena in the social world.
Robert K. Merton
Grand Theories:
– theoretical systems aimed at explaining all social phenomena in one theory
– abstract thinking rather than empirical thinking
– Marxist Conflict Theory, Parsonian structural-functionalist theory
Middle-range Theories
– Theories grounded in empirical reality
– Smaller theories, starting from specific and testable hypotheses
– Eventually abstracting from the specificities of the context to arrive at abstract and
generally applicable theories
– Reference group theory, social control theory, anomy theory
• Three major ways of thinking that have shaped sociology: classical, new and emerging
perspective
• Classical Perspective:
– Macro-level; functionalism, conflict
– Micro-level; Social action
Functionalist perspective
- A framework for building theory that visualizes society as a complex system whose
parts work together to promote solidarity and stability
- Our lives are guided by social structure: relatively stable patterns of social behaviour
- gives shape to the family, directs people to exchange greetings on the street
- leads us to understand social structure in terms of its social function: consequence
for the operation of society
- all social structures contribute to the operations of society
Herbert Spencer
- compared society to organisms of the human body
- body and society both have interdependent elements which contributes to
the survival of the entire organism
- various social structures are interdependent working in concert to preserve
society
- society as a system
- components with a function
,Talcott Parsons
- Structural-functional perspective
- Organizes sociological observations by indentifying various structures of
society and investigating the functions of each one
- Saw society as a cohesive system with specific need that are to be fulfilled by its
subsystems
- 4 different functions need to be met for the system to survive and work
adequately ‘AGIL’
1. Adapt
• Society needs to adapt to the wider environment
• This environment is always changing
• Society needs to have a subsystem devised to change society, so it adapts to that
changed environment
• Subsystem responsible: Economy
2. Goal Attainment
• Society needs to have a subsystem which sets clear goals for the society to move
towards and make sure these goals are met
• Subsystem responsible: Politics
3. Integration
• A society needs to have a common norm and value system, having all individuals
attuned to each other, if it wants to remain together
• Subsystem responsible: The legal system, by maintaining the legal order, people
are led to conform to the same laws which leads to integration
4. Latency
• Closely connected to integration
• Latency ≈ latent pattern management
• The need to have the norms and values of society being transmitted to the next
generation – tradition
• Can be connected to socialization
• Subsystems responsible: family, education, religion
Robert K. Merton
- The consequences of any social pattern are like to differ for various members of
society
- Conventional families may provide crucial support for the development of
children but they also confer privileges while limited the opportunities for
women
- People rarely perceive all the functions of a social structure
- Manifest functions: the recognized and intended consequence of any social pattern
- Latent functions: consequences that are largely unrecognized and unintended
- Example: Functions of higher education
§ Manifest: providing people with information and skills to perform job
effectively
, § Latent: a chance to meet potential partners at university
- Social Dysfunction
- Not all the effects of any social structure turn out to be useful
- Any social patters undesirable consequences for the operations of society
- People may well disagree about what is useful or harmful
- Example: Higher education
§ Some say higher education promotes left-wing thinking and threatens
traditional values
§ Others say higher education is dysfunctional for conferring further
privileges on the wealthy while poorer families find a university
course beyond their financial reach
Critiques on functionalism
- Social patterns vary from place to place and change over time
- Functionalism overlooks social problems: inequality based on social class, race,
ethnicity and gender, divisions that may generate considerate tension and conflict
- Functionalism focuses on stability at the expense of conflict and change
Conflict perspective
- A framework for building theory that visualizes society as an arena of inequality that
generates conflict and change
- Society is an arena of struggle
- Highlights division based on inequality
- Rather than social structures promoting the operation of society as a whole, social
structures typically benefit some people while depriving others
- Rich/poor
- White/black
- Men/women
- Role of sociologists to not only research but strive for change
- Marx:
§ Did not seek to meerly understand
§ “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways;
the point however is to change it”
Critiques on Conflict perspective
- glosses over how shared values or interdependence generate unity among society
- conflict approach pursues political goals -> activism
- not objectively scientific anymore
- neglect of order and cohesion
,Social-Action perspective
- What about people’s personal views and motivation?
- Action theory starts with the ways in which people orientate themselves to each
other and how they try to do so based on meanings
- A micro theory that focuses on how actors assemble social meanings
Max Weber
- Emphasized the need to understand a setting from the people in it
- Emphasizes how human meanings and actions shaped society
- Societies differ primarily in terms of the ways their members think about the world
- Ideas have transforming power
- Idealistic approach:
- Contrasted and compared ideal types:
§ An abstract statement of the essential (sometimes exaggerated)
characteristics of any social phenomenon.
§ Explored religion by contrasting the ideal ‘Hindu’ with the ideal
‘Protestant’
§ These models describe no actual individuals thus then contrasted with
actual, empirical forms found in reality
George Herbert
- Symbolic Interactionism
- A theoretical framework that visualizes society as the product of the
everyday interactions of people doing things together
- Herbert looked at how we assembled our sense of self over time based on social
experience
- Meanings originate/change through social interactions
- Society arises as a shared reality that its members construct as they interact
with each other
- The study of everyday life
- Sociology must proceed with this view through an intimate familiarity with
every-day real life events and not through abstract social theory
The Big Debate
- Do we make social life or does social life make us?
- Which came first: society or the individual?
- Determinism or volunterism
- Structure or Agency
, Sociology 2 – Societies
- What is a society?
- People who interact in a defined space and share a certain organizational
structure and culture
- Society at various levels: subgroups and subculture
Changing patterns of society – Sociocultural Evolution (Lenski)
1. Hunting and gathering societies
• Simple technology for hunting animals and gathering vegetation
• Small organization
- Small nomadic group (25-40)
- Rudimentary / basic labour divisions
§ Men- hunt
§ Women- gather
§ Young & old- do what they can
- Everyone is equal – very little class division
- Prestige, charismatic leadership -> no greater material rewards, have the
same responsibilities as everyone else
• Religion
- Forces of nature
• Struggle for survival? Sahlin disagrees
Marshall Sahlins
- Hunter-gatherers were the original affluent societies
- They took the chill road to affluence
§ Desire little, produce just enough
§ The society with the best worktime-leisuretime ratio
- Hesitant towards transition to less affluent type society
§ Population pressure theory, triangle with sides; population
size, food sources, labour method
§ Environmental conditions -> population began to grow -> food
sources deplete fast -> change of labour method to cope
§ Sparked the establishment of the next type of society
2. Horticultural and pastoral societies
• Technology
- Horticultural
§ Technology based on hand tools to cultivate plants
§ Hoe & digging stick
- Pastoralism
§ Technology based on domestication of animals
• Worst mistake in human history?
- Social inequality intensified
- Families who produced more food had more power
