Notes

1) Sociology seeks to understand existing social institutions, structures, and phenomena, and to analyze their causes and effects, in order to improve society.

2) As a field of study, sociology has a broad scope and covers a wide range of topics. Due to its all-pervasive nature, many of these topics influence and spill over into a number of other fields of study.

3) While psychology mainly concerns itself with the behavior of individuals, the focus of sociology is on group behavior

4) While other social sciences relate to specific areas of social life, sociology attempts to study human social life as a whole. The subject matter of sociology focuses on interactions between the members of groups such as close-knit families, hostile mobs, criminals and their targets, or religious organizations.

5) Economics also studies human behavior and concerns itself with group and individual habits. However, economics focuses only on economic behavior—not on all types of human behavior. Economists study the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services in society.

6) Like economists, sociologists also make extensive use of statistical data. While an economist interprets the data from the point of view of wealth creation (or the loss of it), a sociologist studies social factors that determine wealth inequality.
* Sociologists are more interested in understanding how an individual’s (or group’s) social position relies on their economic strength and vice versa.*

7) Political science focuses on political systems and structures. It examines the aspects of human behavior that relate to power and authority. The overlap and interaction between the two disciplines resulted in the emergence of the field of political sociology.

8) Sociologists explore the interrelationship between social and political structures. Political sociologists study the effects of social behaviors on issues of power and authority. They analyze how social factors affect voting behavior, political dominance, and other political processes (such as social and political movements).

1838: French philosopher Auguste Comte coined the term sociology to describe a field of study dedicated to the science of positivism. He believed that society followed certain unchangeable laws and concluded that it should receive examination in the same fashion as the natural world, using a scientific approach.
1848: Karl Marx laid down the foundations to his theory on class struggle in his work The Communist Manifesto. In this book, he noted that human history demonstrated multiple class struggles, and he predicted that these would all disappear with the victory of the working class.

*Harriet Martineau, an English journalist and social reformer, contributed to the founding of sociology through an analysis of American society after her travels there in the 1830's. She also translated the work of Auguste Comte and popularized it in the English-speaking world.*

1859:Charles Darwin’s theory on natural selection influenced social thought, giving rise to the theory of Social Darwinism. Herbert Spencer, a pioneering contributor to this approach, held that a similar process was applicable to people, groups, and races. In his view, just as the struggle for survival in the natural world depended on “the survival of the fittest,” human society evolved through struggle as well.

1) Lester Ward, an American botanist and sociologist, published Dynamic Sociology, followed by other works on sociology. His most notable contribution to sociology was his insistence that people could identify social laws and control them to improve society.

2) Emile Durkheim was a French philosopher and sociologist. He pioneered the use of scientific methodology in sociology. He denounced traditional methods of speculation and laid the foundation for a scientific, research-based discipline of sociology.

3) Jane Addams, an American social worker, started the first settlement house in the United States, called Hull House. This was a social movement to get the rich and the poor to live more closely together in an interdependent community.

4) Max Weber, a German sociologist, developed the theory of social action. Weber defined and identified four different types of social action. He showed how socio-cultural and religious factors had a major influence on the rise and success of early European capitalism.

5) Booker T. Washington was an African-American educator and reformer who urged other African-American people to abandon their efforts to win civil rights, and to cultivate industrial and farming skills to achieve economic security instead. He believed that attaining economic security was the means to win over the respect and acceptance of the white community.

6) William E.B. Du Bois, an African American, fought against racism and campaigned for civil rights of African Americans.

7) Robert E. Park, an American sociologist, coined the term “human ecology.” He developed this field of study, which explores the relationship between people and their natural, social, and built environments.

8) C. Wright Mills, an American sociologist, criticized the structural functionalism approach to sociology and the empirical methods of social research. Mills believed that sociology should find the connections between the micro social environments of individuals and the macro social and historical forces in which they exist. He coined the term ‘sociological imagination’ to explain the kind of insight that sociology offered.

9) Talcott Parsons, a renowned twentieth-century American sociologist, developed the action theory. He also provided further insight into the functionalist theory of sociology.

10) Julian Samora was a Mexican-American professor of sociology. He studied the social conditions of Mexican-American people, highlighting the issues of civil rights, public health, and rural poverty.

11) Robert Nisbet, an American sociologist, attempted to create a balance between the values of traditionalism (represented by community, moral authority, and the sacred) and the values of modernism (associated with individualism, equality, and moral release). He believed that the values of both philosophies must find a balance in society.

12) Another American sociologist, Robert K. Merton, contributed significantly to the sociology of science by examining the interactions and importance of social and cultural structures and science. He later formulated the Merton Thesis, which explained the relationship between religion and science

Functionalism: The functionalist perspective considers society as an organism and analyzes it as a system of interconnected parts, each working to maintain a state of equilibrium or balance. Each component of society, such as a family, education group, or political or economic body, works to achieve and maintain a balance in society. The functional perspective emphasizes the interconnectedness of different parts of society and that each part influences the others. Functionalism explains the existence of all social customs, traditions, and institutions by investigating the purposes they serve in maintaining social harmony

Conflict theory: While the functionalists view different elements of society as working constantly together toward stability, the conflict perspective views the world as inherently unstable due to the actions of competing groups. It emphasizes that every society has two conflicting groups with mutually opposing interests.

Symbolic interactionism: While the functional and conflict perspectives are at loggerheads with each other, they analyze society as a whole and look at the big picture. They explain social problems at an institutional level. This fixation with macro and grand theories resulted in the neglect of individuals and small groups in society. Symbolic interactionism filled this vacuum by offering a micro-level approach to studying sociology.