SOC101 Updated Highlighted Handouts by MAS All Rounder

There was no sociology as a distinct discipline before the advent of 19th century. As a distinct discipline it emerged about the middle of the 19th century when European social observers began to use scientific methods to test their ideas. It looks that three factors led to the development of sociology.

The first was the Industrial revolution.

By the mid 19th century Europe was changing from agriculture to factory production. There was the emergence of new occupations as well as new avenues of employment away from the land.

Masses of people migrated to cities in search of jobs. Pull and push factors were instrumental in such migrations. In the countryside, due to the nature of agricultural society, there were no occupations that could be alternatives to agriculture. Hence people got pushed to look for new places whereas the urban/industrial places with new job opportunities provided a pull to the same population.

At the new places there was anonymity, crowding, filth, and poverty. Ties to the land, to the generations that had lived there before them, and to the ways of their life were abruptly broken. Eventually the urban life brought radical changes in the lives of people.

The city greeted them with horrible working conditions: low pay; long and exhausting working hours; dangerous work; foul smoke; and much noise. To survive the vagaries of life, families had to permit their children to work in these uncongenial conditions.

People in these industrial cities developed new ideas about democracy and political rights. They did not want to remain tied to their rulers. Therefore the ideas about individual liberty, individual rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness emerged, which actually laid the foundation to future political revolution.

The second factor that stimulated the development of sociology was imperialism. Europeans successfully conquered many parts of the world. They were exposed to radically different cultures. Startled by these contrasting ways of life, they began to ask why cultures differed.

The third impetus for the development of sociology was the success of the natural sciences. People moved to question fundamental aspects of their social world. They started using the scientific method (systematic observation, objectivity) to the study of human behaviour.

Auguste Comte

The idea of applying the scientific method to the social world, known as positivism, was apparently first proposed by Auguste Comte (1798-1857). He was French. He migrated from a small town to Paris. The changes he himself experienced, combined with those France underwent in the revolution, led Comte to become interested in the two interrelated issues: social order (social static) and social change (social dynamics). What holds the society together (Why is there a social order)? And once the society is set then what causes it to change? Why its directions change?

Comte concluded that the right way to answer such questions was to apply the scientific method to social life. There must be laws that underlie the society. Therefore we should discover these principles by applying scientific method to social world. Once these principles discovered then we could apply these for social reform.

He advocated for building new societies on twin foundations of science and industry rather than on religion and landownerserf relationship. انہوں نے مذہب اور زمینداروں کے خطبے سے متعلق تعلقات کی بجائے سائنس اور صنعت کی دو بنیادوں پر نئی معاشرے بنانے کی وکالت کی۔ This will be a new science and Comte named it as Sociology (1838) – the study of society. Comte is credited with being the founder of sociology.

Other early pioneer names are:

Herbert Spenser (1820-1903)

He was an Englishman and is sometimes called second founder of sociology. He too believed that society operates under some fixed laws. He was evolutionary and considered that societies evolve from lower to higher forms. In this way he applied the ideas of Darwin to the development of human society, and hence this approach may be called as Social Darwinism.

By following the basic principle of Social Darwinism Spenser advocated that ‘let the fittest survive’. There should be no reform because it will help in the survival of lower order individuals. (Charity and helping the poor were considered to be wrong). Spenser was a social philosopher rather than a social researcher.

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Karl Marx was a German. According to him the key to human history is Class Conflict. Not really a sociologist but wrote widely about history, philosophy, economics, political science.

Because of his insights into the relationship between the social classes, he is claimed to be an early sociologist. He introduced one of the major perspectives in sociology – conflict perspective.

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)

He was French. His primary goal was of getting sociology recognized as a separate academic discipline. His systematic study comparing suicide rates among several countries revealed an underlying social factor: People were more likely to commit suicide if their ties to others in their communities were weak. He identified the key role of social integration in social life.

Max Weber (1864-1920)

Max Weber was a German. He used cross-cultural and historical materials in order to determine how extensively social groups affect people’s orientations to life.

The Fields of Sociology

There is a big diversity in fields of interest in Sociology. There is long list of fields that have been provided by the American Sociological Association as a Guide to Graduate Departments which is given below:

1. Biosociology Occupations/Professions Collective
2. Behaviour/Socioal Movements
3. Penology/Corrections Community
4. Political Sociology
5. Comparative Sociology/Macro sociology
6. Race/Ethnic/Minority
7. Relations Criminal Justice

Lesson 2 THE SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

Sociology is a reasoned and rigorous study of human social life, social groups, and societies. At the heart of sociology is a distinctive point of view called “the sociological perspective”. Thus sociology offers a perspective, a view of the world. For example: why do human lives seem to follow certain predictable pattern? The truth is that:

Our lives do not unfold according to sheer chance, Nor do we decide for ourselves how to live, acting on what is called ‘free will’.

We make many important decisions everyday, of course, but always within the larger arena called “society”. The essential wisdom of sociology is that: Our social world guides our actions and life choices just as the seasons influence our activities and clothing.

This is sociological perspective. Perspective means a view or an outlook or an approach or an imagination (of the world). Hence sociological perspective means an approach to understanding human behavior by placing it within its broader social context. People live in a society. Society is a group of people who share a culture and a territory. People’s behavior is influenced by their society. To find out why people do what they do, sociologists look at social location, where people are located in a particular society. For human beings the existence of society is essential. It is essential:

For the survival of human child at birth; and also

For social experience – for purposes of ‘nurturance’.

The human child is so helpless at the time of birth that without the help of other members of society (family for example) the mere survival is at stake. Then the other important aspect is to ‘nurture’ this human being into a ‘social being’ i.e. a participating member of the society. For developing the child into a regular participating ‘social being’ the role of society is crucial. The cases of isolated children (Anna, Isabelle, and Genie) provide evidence to the fact that without the interaction with members of society the natural potentials are lost and the child may not become a normal ‘social being’. Each society nurtures the child into a ‘social being’ within its own societal perspective.

Seeing the general in the particular:

Peter Burger (1963) described the sociological perspective as seeing the general in the particular. It means identifying general patterns in the behavior of particular people. Although every individual is unique, a society shapes the lives of its members. People in the USA are much more likely to expect love to figure in marriage than, say, people living in a traditional village in rural Pakistan. Nevertheless, every society acts differently on various categories of people (children compared to adults; women compared to men, rich compared to poor).General categories to which we belong shape our experiences. Children are different from adults, more than just biological maturity. Society attaches meaning to age, so that we experience distinct stages in our lives i.e. childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, late adulthood, and old age. In fact all these stages with respect to the lines of demarcation (years as cutting points) are determined by society. What is the position of a particular age category in the society and what are the roles and responsibilities assigned to members of that age group are all determined by that society. Therefore age