1.

The Sociological perspective

What is Sociology?
Sociology is the scientific study of
human society & social behavior.
What is Sociology?
 It focuses primarily on the influence of
social relationships upon people’s attitudes
and behavior and on how societies are
established and change.
 The ultimate aim of sociology as summed
up by Samuel Koenig is “to improve man’s
adjustment to life by developing objective
knowledge concerning social phenomena
which can be used to deal effectively with
social problems.”
The Sociological
Perspective
1. The sociological perspective is important because it
provides a different way of looking at familiar
worlds. It allows us to gain a new vision of social
life.
2. This perspective stresses the broader social context
of behavior by looking at individuals’ social
location, employment, income, education, gender,
age, and race –and by considering external
influences –people’s experiences –which are
internalized and become part of a person’s thinking
and motivations. (cont…)
 We are able to see the links between what
people do and the social settings that shape
their behavior.
3. The sociological perspective enables us to
analyze and understand both the forces that
contribute to the emergence and growth of
the global village and our unique
experiences in our own smaller corners of
this village.
Subject Matter of Sociology
 Sociological analysis: An analysis of human
society and culture with a sociological
perspective. Also to analyze the factors & forces
underlying historical transformations of society.
 Study of primary units of social life: It is
concerned with social acts and social
relationships, individual personality, groups,
communities, associations, organizations and
populations.
 Development, structure & function of a wide
variety of basic social institutions: Such as the
family & kinship, religion & property, economic,
political, legal, educational and scientific, recreational
& welfare, visual & expressive institutions.
 Fundamental social processes: Such as
cooperation & competition; accommodation &
integration; social conflict including war & revolution;
communication; social differentiation & stratification;
socialization & instruction; social control & deviance
(crime, suicide); social integration & social change.
 Emphasis on social research: Contemporary sociology
has tended to become more and more rational &
empirical rather than philosophical & idealistic.
 Formulation of Concepts, Propositions, and
Theories:
 Concepts are abstracted from concrete experience to
represent a class of phenomena. Terms such as social
stratification, differentiation, conformity, deviance etc.
represent concepts.
 A Proposition seeks to reflect a relationship between
different categories of data or concepts. For example,
‘lower class youths are more likely to commit crimes than
middle class youths’. This proposition is debatable. It may
prove to be false.
 Theories represent systematically related
propositions that explain social phenomena.
Sociological theories are mostly rooted in
factual than philosophical.
 Venturing Specialization: In the present era,
sociologists go for specializations as well. Such
as sociology of knowledge; sociology of history;
sociology of literature; sociology of culture;
sociology of religion; sociology of family etc.
Sociology and the Other
Sciences
1. Sociology is defined as “the scientific study
of society and human behavior.”
2. Science is the systematic methods used to
obtain knowledge and the knowledge
obtained by those methods.
3. Science can be divided into the Natural
Sciences and the Social Sciences.
4. The natural sciences attempt to
comprehend, explain, and predict events in
our natural environment.
5. Social sciences attempt to objectively study
the social world. Like the natural sciences,
the social sciences are divided into
specialized fields based on their subject
matter.
6. Political science focuses on politics or
government.
7. Economics analyzes the production,
distribution, and allocation of the material
goods and services of a society.
8. Anthropology attempts to understand
culture (a people’s total way of life) by
focusing primarily on preliterate people.
9. Psychology concentrates on processes that
occur within the individual.
10. Sociology is similar to the other social
sciences in some ways but it is distinct
because it looks at all social
institutions, focuses on industrialized
societies, and looks at external factors
which influence people.
11. Scientists are guided by a set of
principles as they pursue their goals.
The Development of
Sociology
 Sociology developed in the middle of the 19th
century as a result of three factors:
 a) the social upheaval in Europe as a result of the
Industrial Revolution and the political revolutions in
America and France;
 b) the development of imperialism – as the
Europeans conquered other nations, they came in
contact with different cultures and began to ask
why cultures varied; and
 c) the success of the natural sciences, which
created a desire to apply scientific methods in order
to find answers for the questions being raised about
the social world as well.
1. Auguste Comte (1798-
1857)
 Auguste Comte coined the term “Sociology” and
suggested the use of positivism – applying the
scientific approach to the social world – but he did
not utilize this approach himself. He established
two specific problems for sociological investigation:
a) Social statics; and b) Social dynamics. Social
statics refers to the problem of order and stability-
how & why do societies hold together and endure?
Social dynamics refers to the problem of social
change- what makes societies change and what
shapes the nature and direction of the changes?
2. Herbert Spencer (1820-
1903)
Herbert Spencer viewed societies as
evolutionary, coined the term “the survival of the
fittest”, and became known for social Darwinism.
3. Karl Marx (1818-1883)
 Karl Marx, founder of the conflict Perspective,
believed that class conflict – the struggle between
the proletariat and the bourgeoisie – was the key to
human history.
4.Emile Durkheim (1858-
1917)
 Emile Durkheim played an important role in the
development of sociology.
a) A primary goal of his was to get sociology
recognized as a separate academic discipline.
b) He was interested in understanding the social
factors that influence individual behavior; he studied
suicide rates among different groups and concluded
that social integration, the degree to which people
are tied to their social group, was a key social factor
in suicide. c) Durkheim’s third concern was that
social research be practical; sociologists should not
only diagnose the causes of social problems but
should also develop solutions for them. (C0nt…)
5.Max Weber (1864-1920)
 Max Weber defined religion as a central
force in social change. For example,
Protestantism encourages greater economic
development and was the central factor in the
rise of capitalism in some countries.
 Harriet Martineau studied social life in both
Great Britain and the United States, publishing
Society in America decades before Durkheim and
Weber were even born. While her original research
has been largely ignored by the discipline, she is
known for her translations of August Comte ’s ideas
into English.
Sociology in North
America
 The situation of women in North America was
similar to that of European women and their
contributions to sociology met a similar fate.
Denied a role in the universities, many turned to
social activism, working with the poor and regarded
as social workers.
 Jane Adams is an example; she founded Hull
House, a settlement house for the poor, and
worked to bridge the gap between the powerful
and the powerless. She is the only sociologist to
have won the Nobel Peace prize in 1931.
 Many early North American sociologists
combined the role of sociologist with that of
social reformer. For example, University of
Chicago sociologists Park and Burgess,
studied many urban problems and offered
suggestions on how to improve them.
 Talcott Parsons developed abstract models of
society to show how the parts of society
harmoniously work together.
 Robert K. Merton stressed the development of
middle-range theories – explanations of human
behavior that go beyond the particular observation
or research but avoid sweeping generalizations that
attempt to explain everything.
 Countering this development was C. Wright Mills,
who urged sociologists to get back to social reform.
Theoretical Perspectives in
Sociology
 Sociologists use three different theoretical
perspectives to understand social behavior.
 Symbolic interactionism views symbols, things
to which we attach meaning, as the basis of social
life. a) Through the use of symbols people are able
to define relationships to others, to coordinate
actions with others, making social life possible, and
to develop a sense of themselves. b) A symbolic
interactionist studying divorce would focus on the
changing meaning of marriage; family and divorce
have all contributed to the increase in the rate of
divorce in U.S. society.
 The central idea of Functional analysis is that society
is a whole unit, made up of interrelated parts that work
together. a) To understand society, we must look at
both structure, how the parts of society fit together to
make up the whole, the function, how each part
contributes to society. b) Robert Merton used the term
function to refer to the beneficial consequences of
people’s actions to keep society stable and dysfunctions
to refer to consequences that undermine stability.
Functions can be either manifest (actions that are
intended) or latent (unintended consequences). c) In
trying to explain divorce, functionalist would look at
how industrialization and urbanization both contributed
to the changing function of marriage and the family.
 According to Conflict theory, society is viewed as
composed of groups competing for scarce
resources. a) Karl Marx focused on struggles
between the bourgeoisie, the small group of
capitalists who own the means of production, and
the proletariat, the masses of workers exploited by
the capitalists. b) Contemporary conflict theorists
have expanded this perspective to include conflict
in all relations of power and authority. c) Divorce is
seen as the outcome of the shifting balance of
power within a family; as women have gained
power and try to address inequalities in their
relationships, men resist.