Unit II: Social thought

August Comte: Law of three stages, Positivism

Emile Durkheim: Social Solidarity, The theory of Division of
Labour,
Max Weber: The Concept of authority and the Concept of
Social action
Karl Marx: Class struggle, Alienation

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES IN SOCIOLOGY:

Theories in sociology provide us with different perspectives with which to view
our social world. A perspective is simply a way of looking at the world. A theory is
a set of interrelated propositions or principles designed to answer a question or
explain a particular phenomenon; it provides us with a perspective. Sociological
theories help us to explain and predict the social world in which we live. Sociology
includes three major theoretical perspectives: the functionalist perspective, the
conflict perspective, and the symbolic interactionist perspective (sometimes called
the interactionist perspective or simply the micro view). Each perspective offers a
variety of explanations about the social world and human behavior.
 Functional perspective
The functionalist perspective sees society as a complex system whose parts work
together to promote solidarity and stability. This approach looks at society
through a macro-level orientation and broadly focuses on the social structures that
shape society as a whole.
Functionalists also believe that a successful society has a stable social structure, in
which different institutions perform unique functions that contribute to the
maintenance of the whole – in the same way that the different organs of the body
perform different functions to keep a human being healthy. In a successful or
‘healthy’ society, for example, social life is organised so that the family socialises
the young and meets emotional needs, school teaches us broader life skills, the
workplace is where we contribute the economy. Functionalists generally believe
institutions perform positive functions (they do good things for the individual and
society). Functionalism is an approach in sociology which attempts to understand
social phenomena in terms of their relationship to the system. ... For example if
there is pain in eye it will affect the whole body and it will disrupt the function of
entire system. Same happens to society.

The functionalist perspective is based largely on the works of Herbert Spencer,

Emile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons, and Robert Merton. According to functionalism,
society is a system of interconnected parts that work together in harmony to
maintain a state of balance and social equilibrium for the whole. For example, each
of the social institutions contributes important functions for society: Family
provides a context for reproducing, nurturing, and socializing children; education
offers a way to transmit a society’s skills, knowledge, and culture to its youth;
politics provides a means of governing members of society; economics provides
for the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services; and
religion provides moral guidance and an outlet for worship of a higher power. The
functionalist perspective emphasizes the interconnectedness of society by focusing
on how each part influences and is influenced by other parts.

Functionalists use the terms functional and dysfunctional to describe the

effects of social elements on society. Elements of society are functional if they
contribute to social stability and dysfunctional if they disrupt social stability. Some
aspects of society can be both functional and dysfunctional. For example, crime is
dysfunctional in that it is associated with physical violence, loss of property, and
fear. But according to Durkheim and other functionalists, crime is also functional
for society because it leads to heightened awareness of shared moral bonds and
increased social cohesion.

Sociologists have identified two types of functions: manifest and latent

(Merton 1968). Manifest functions are consequences that are intended and
commonly recognized. Latent functions are consequences that are unintended and
often hidden. For example, the manifest function of education is to transmit
knowledge and skills to society’s youth. But public elementary schools also serve
as babysitters for employed parents, and colleges offer a place for young adults to
meet potential mates. The baby-sitting and mate-selection functions are not the
intended or commonly recognized functions of education; hence they are latent
functions.

Durkheim’s Functionalism

Emile Durkheim (1858 – 1917) was the first ever professor of Sociology.
1. Society shapes the Individual
Durkheim argued that society has a reality of its own over and above the
individuals who comprise it. Members of society are constrained by ‘social facts’,
by ‘ways of acting, thinking and feeling which are external to the individual and
endowed with a power of compulsion, by reason of which they control him’.
Social facts include such things as beliefs, moral codes, and basic norms and
values which are passed from one generation to the next and shared by individuals
who make up a society. From this point of view it is not the consciousness of the
individual that directs human behaviour but common beliefs and sentiments which
shape his or her consciousness. In short, according to Durkheim, society shapes the
individual.
2. Social Solidarity, Socialization and Anomie 
Durkheim believed that too much freedom was bad for the individual –
when individuals have too freedom, or when there is no clear guidance about
what’s right and wrong, individuals suffer from a sense uncertainty and confusion
about their place in world, not knowing what they should be doing, a condition
Durkheim called ‘anomie’.
Durkheim argued that societies needed to create a sense of social solidarity –
which is making individuals feel as if they part of something bigger and teaching
them the standards of acceptable behaviour. At one level this is achieved through
the family, but for Durkheim, feeling a sense of belonging to wider society was
also important. Traditionally this was achieved through religion, but Durkheim was
concerned that religion was fading, and that modern societies faced a ‘crisis of
anomie’.
He also theorised that new institutions such as schools, work places and voluntary
organisations would eventually provide the ‘social glue’ which would make people
feel like they belonged. Durkheim’s thinking is actually one of the fundamental
things which convinced governments the world over to spend billions of pounds on
schools – in order to socialize the young and create a sense of solidarity.
For Durkheim, and functionalists in general, Socialization (the teaching of shared
norms and values) through institutions is one of the key ways in which social
solidarity
 Conflict Perspective
The functionalist perspective views society as composed of different parts working
together. In contrast, the conflict perspective views society as composed of
different groups and interest competing for power and resources. The conflict
perspective explains various aspects of our social world by looking at which
groups have power and benefit from a particular social arrangement. For example,
feminist theory argues that we live in a patriarchal society—a hierarchical system
of organization controlled by men. Although there are many varieties of feminist
theory, most would hold that feminism “demands that existing economic, political,
and social structures be changed” (Weir and Faulkner 2004, p.xii). The origins of
the conflict perspective can be traced to the classic works of Karl Marx. Marx
suggested that all societies go through stages of economic development. As
societies evolve from agricultural to industrial, concern over meeting survival
needs is replaced by concern over making a profit, the hallmark of a capitalist
system. Industrialization leads to the development of two classes of people: the
bourgeoisie, or the owners of the means of production (e.g., factories, farms,
businesses); and the proletariat, or the workers who earn wages. The division of
society into two broad classes of people—the “haves” and the “have nots”—is
beneficial to the owners of the means of production. The workers, who may earn
only subsistence wages, are denied access to the many resources available to the
wealthy owners. According to Marx, the bourgeoisie use their power to control the
institutions of society to their advantage. For example, Marx suggested that
religion serves as an “opiate of the masses” in that it soothes the distress and
suffering associated with the working-class lifestyle and focuses the workers’
attention on spirituality, God, and the afterlife rather than on such worldly
concerns as living conditions. In essence, religion diverts the workers so that they
concentrate on being rewarded in heaven for living a moral life rather than on
questioning their exploitation.
 Symbolic Interactionism
Both the functionalist and the conflict perspectives are concerned with how broad
aspects of society, such as institutions and large social groups, influence the social
world. This level of sociological analysis is called macro sociology: It looks at the
big picture of society and suggests how social problems are affected at the
institutional level. Micro sociology, another level of sociological analysis, is
concerned with the social psychological dynamics of individuals interacting in
small groups. Symbolic interactionism reflects the micro-sociological perspective,
and was largely influenced by the work of early sociologists and philosophers,
such as George Simmel, Charles Cooley, George Herbert Mead, and Erving
Goffman. Symbolic interactionism emphasizes that human behavior is influenced
by definitions and meanings that are created and maintained through symbolic
interaction with others. Sociologist W.I. Thomas (1966) emphasized the
importance of definitions and meanings in social behavior and its consequences.
He suggested that humans respond to their definition of a situation rather than to
the objective situation itself. Hence Thomas noted that situations that we define as
real become real in their consequences. Symbolic interactionism also suggests that
our identity or sense of self is shaped by social interaction. We develop our self-
concept by observing how others interact with us a label us. By observing how
others view us, we see a reflection ourselves that Cooley calls the “looking glass
self.”
THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES
What is a sociological theory? And how does it relate to the challenge of providing
explanations of social facts?

In the natural sciences the answer to this question is fairly clear. A theory is a
hypothesis about one or more entities or processes and a specification of their
operations and interactions. A theory is articulated in terms that permit rigorous
and unambiguous derivation of implications for the behavior of a body of
phenomena -- perhaps through specification of a set of equations or through a set
of statements with deductive consequences. A theory may specify deterministic
properties of a set of entities -- thus permitting point predictions about future states
of the relevant system; or it may specify probabilistic relations among entities,
giving rise to statements about the distribution of possible future states of the
system. And a theory is provided with a set of "bridge" statements that permit the
theorist to connect the consequences of the theory with predictions about
observable states of affairs.

So in the natural sciences, theories are expected to have precise specification,

deductive consequences, and specific bridge relationships to observable
phenomena.

Is there anything like this construct in the social sciences?

The question of the role of theory in social thinking is a complex one, and the
concept of theory seems to be an ambiguous one (as Gabriel Abend points out in
an article mentioned below). At one end of the spectrum (is it really a spectrum?)
is the idea that a theory is a hypothesis about a causal mechanism. It may refer to
unobservable processes (and is therefore itself "unobservable"), but it is solidly
grounded in the empirical world. It postulates a regular relationship between or
among a set of observable social factors; for example, "middle class ideology
makes young people more vulnerable to mobilization in XYZ movements."

At a much more abstract level, we might consider whether a theory is a broad

family of ideas, assumptions, concepts, and hypotheses about how the world
works. So Marxism or feminism might represent a theory of the forces that are
most important in explaining certain kinds of phenomena. We might refer to this
broad collection of ideas as a "theory".  Or we might instead regard this type of
intellectual formation as something more than a theory -- a paradigm or mental
framework -- or something less than a theory -- a conceptual scheme.

Consider this taxonomy of the field of social knowledge-creation:

 concepts -- a vocabulary for organizing and representing the social world

 theory -- one or more hypotheses about causal mechanisms and processes

 mental framework / paradigm -- a set of presuppositions, ontological

assumptions, guiding ideas, in terms of which one approaches a range of
phenomena

 epistemology -- a set of ideas about what constitutes valid knowledge of a

domain
And we might say that there is a generally rising order among these constructs. We
need concepts to formulate hypotheses and theories; we need theories to give form
to our mental frameworks; and we need epistemologies to justify or criticize
theories and paradigms.  In another sense, there is a descending order from
epistemology to framework to concepts and theories: the framework and
epistemology guide the researcher in designing a conceptual system and a set of
theoretical hypotheses.

Where do constructs like feminism, critical race theory, or Marxism fall within this
scheme?  We might say that each of these bodies of thought involves commitments
in each of these areas: specialized concepts, specific causal hypotheses, an
organizing framework of analysis, and an epistemology that puts forward some
specific ideas about the status of knowledge and representation.

The theory of "resource mobilization" and social movements is somewhat less

comprehensive (McAdam and Snow, Readings on Social Movements: Origins,
Dynamics, and Outcomes; McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald, Comparative
Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures,
and Cultural Framings ; link, link, link).  It functions as a linked body of
hypotheses about how social movements arise.  So RMT is a good example of the
limited conception of theory.  Zald, McCarthy, Tilly, McAdam, and others purport
to identify the controlling causal variables that explain the success or failure of
mobilization around grievance. Their theories reflect a mental framework -- one
that emphasizes purposive rationality (rational choice theory) and material factors
(resources).  And they offer specific hypotheses about mobilization, organization,
and social networks.

Gabriel Abend's article "The Meaning of Theory" (link) in Sociological

Theory (2008) is a valuable contribution on this subject. Abend offers explications
for seven varieties of theories and shows how these variants represent a wide range
of things we might have in mind by saying that "theory is important."  Here are his
formulations:
1. Theory1. If you use the word ‘theory’ in the sense of theory1, what you
mean by it is a general proposition, or logically-connected system of general
propositions, which establishes a relationship between two or more variables.
2. Theory2. A theory2 is an explanation of a particular social phenomenon.
3. Theory3. Like theory1 and theory2, the main goal of a theory3 is to say
something about empirical phenomena in the social world. However, the main
questions that theory3 sets out to answer are not of the type ‘what x causes y?’
Rather, given a certain phenomenon P (or a certain fact, relation, process, trend),
it asks: ‘what does it mean that P?,’ ‘is it significant that P?,’ ‘is it really the case
that P?,’ ‘what is P all about?,’ or ‘how can we make sense of or shed light on P?’
4. Theory4. The word ‘theory’ and some of its derivatives are sometimes used
to refer to the study of and the students of the writings of authors such as Marx,
Weber, Durkheim, Simmel, Parsons, Habermas, or Bourdieu.
5. Theory5. A theory5 is a Weltanschauung, that is, an overall perspective
from which one sees and interprets the world. Unlike theories1, theories2, and
theories3, theories5 are not about the social world itself, but about how to look at,
grasp, and represent it.
6. Theory6. Lexicographers trace the etymology of the word ‘theory’ to the
late Latin noun ‘theoria,’ and the Greek noun ‘the¯oria’ and verb ‘the¯orein’
(usually translated as “to look at,” “to observe,” “to see,” or “to contemplate”).
The connotations of these words include detachment, spectatorship,
contemplation, and vision. This etymology notwithstanding, some people use the
word ‘theory’ to refer to accounts that have a fundamental normative component.
7. Theory7. Many sociologists have written about issues such as the ‘micro-
macro problem,’ the ‘problem of structure and agency,’ or ‘the problem of social
order.’ This type of work is usually thought to fall within the domain of
sociological theory. One may also use the word ‘theory’ to refer to discussions
about the ways in which ‘reality’ is ‘socially constructed’; the scientific status of
sociology (value freedom, the idea of a social law, the relations between
explanation and prediction, explanation and understanding, reasons and causes,
and the like); or the ‘relativity’ of morality. In these examples the word ‘theory’
assumes a distinct meaning, which I distinguish as theory7. (177-181)

Sociologists study social events, interactions, and patterns. They then

develop theories to explain why these occur and what can result from them. In
sociology, a theory is a way to explain different aspects of social interactions and
create testable propositions about society (Allan 2006). For example, Durkheim’s
proposition that differences in suicide rate can be explained by differences in the
degree of social integration in different communities is a theory.
As this brief survey of the history of sociology suggests, however, there is
considerable diversity in the theoretical approaches sociology takes to studying
society. Sociology is a multi-perspective science: a number of distinct
perspectives or paradigms offer competing explanations of social
phenomena. Paradigms are philosophical and theoretical frameworks used within
a discipline to formulate theories, generalizations, and the research performed in
support of them. They refer to the underlying organizing principles that tie
different constellations of concepts, theories, and ways of formulating problems
together (Drengson 1983).

Table Sociological Theories or Perspectives. Different sociological perspectives

enable sociologists to view social issues through a variety of useful lenses.
Sociological
Analysis Level of Focus
Paradigm
Structural How each part of society functions together to
Macro
Functionalism contribute to the whole
Symbolic
Micro One-to-one interactions and communications
Interactionism
How inequalities contribute to social differences and
Critical Sociology Macro
perpetuate differences in power

Structural Functionalism

Structural Functionalism also falls within the positivist tradition in sociology due

to Durkheim’s early efforts to describe the subject matter of sociology in terms of
objective social facts—“social facts must be studied as things, that is, as realities
external to the individual” (Durkheim 1895)—and to explain them in terms of their
social functions. Durkheim argued that in order to study society, sociologists have
to look beyond individuals to social facts: the laws, morals, values, religious
beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals, and all of the cultural rules that govern social
life (Durkheim 1895). Each of these social facts serves one or more functions
within a society. For example, one function of a society’s laws may be to protect
society from violence, while another is to punish criminal behaviour, while another
is to preserve public health.

Following Durkheim’s insight, structural functionalism sees society as a structure

with interrelated parts designed to meet the biological and social needs of
individuals who make up that society. In this respect, society is like a body that
relies on different organs to perform crucial functions. In fact the English
philosopher and biologist Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) likened society to a human
body. He argued that just as the various organs in the body work together to keep
the entire system functioning and regulated, the various parts of society work
together to keep the entire society functioning and regulated (Spencer 1898). By
parts of society, Spencer was referring to such social institutions as the economy,
political systems, health care, education, media, and religion. Spencer continued
the analogy by pointing out that societies evolve just as the bodies of humans and
other animals do (Maryanski and Turner 1992).

As we have seen, Émile Durkheim developed a similar analogy to explain the

structure of societies and how they change and survive over time. Durkheim
believed that earlier, more primitive societies were held together because most
people performed similar tasks and shared values, language, and symbols. There
was a low division of labour, a common religious system of social beliefs, and a
low degree of individual autonomy. Society was held together on the basis
of mechanical solidarity: a shared collective consciousness with harsh
punishment for deviation from the norms. Modern societies, according to
Durkheim, were more complex. People served many different functions in society
and their ability to carry out their function depended upon others being able to
carry out theirs. Modern society was held together on the basis of a division of
labour or organic solidarity: a complex system of interrelated parts, working
together to maintain stability, i.e., an organism (Durkheim 1893). According to this
sociological paradigm, the parts of society are interdependent. The academic relies
on the mechanic for the specialized skills required to fix his or her car, the
mechanic sends his or her children to university to learn from the academic, and
both rely on the baker to provide them with bread for their morning toast. Each
part influences and relies on the others.

Criticism

The main criticisms of both quantitative positivism and structural functionalism

have to do with the way in which social phenomena are turned into objective social
facts. On one hand, interpretive sociology suggests that the quantification of
variables in quantitative sociology reduces the rich complexity and ambiguity of
social life to an abstract set of numbers and statistical relationships that cannot
capture the meaning it holds for individuals. Measuring someone’s depth of
religious belief or “religiosity” by the number of times they attend church in a
week explains very little about the religious experience. Similarly, interpretive
sociology argues that structural functionalism, with its emphasis on systems of
structures and functions tends to reduce the individual to the status of a
sociological dupe, assuming pre-assigned roles and functions without any
individual agency or capacity for self-creation.

On the other hand, critical sociology challenges the conservative tendencies of

quantitative sociology and structural functionalism. Both types of positivist
analysis represent themselves as being objective, or value-neutral, which is a
problem in the context of critical sociology’s advocacy for social justice. However,
both types of positivism also have conservative assumptions built into their basic
approach to social facts. The focus in quantitative sociology on observable facts
and law-like statements presents a historical and deterministic picture of the world
that cannot account for the underlying historical dynamics of power relationships
and class or other contradictions. One can empirically observe the trees but not the
forest so to speak. Similarly, the focus on the needs and the smooth functioning of
social systems in structural functionalism supports a conservative viewpoint
because it tends to see the functioning and dynamic equilibrium of society as good
or normal, whereas change is pathological. In Davis and Moore’s famous essay
“Some Principles of Stratification” (1944) for example, the authos argued that
social inequality was essentially “good” because it functioned to preserve the
motivation of individuals to work hard to get ahead. Critical sociology challenges
both the justice and practical consequences of social inequality.

Interpretive Sociology
The interpretive perspective in sociology is aligned with the hermeneutic traditions
of the humanities like literature, philosophy, and history. The focus is on
understanding or interpreting human activity in terms of the meanings that humans
attribute to it. Max Weber’s Verstehende (understanding) sociology is often cited
as the origin of this perspective in sociology because of his emphasis on the
centrality of meaning and intention in social action:
Sociology… is a science which attempts the interpretive understanding of social
action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects. In
“action” is included all human behaviour when and in so far as the acting
individual attaches a subjective meaning to it…. [Social action is] action mutually
oriented to that of each other (Weber 1922).
This emphasis on the meaningfulness of social action is taken up later by
phenomenology, ethnomethodology, and symbolic interactionism. The interpretive
perspective is concerned with developing a knowledge of social interaction as a
meaning-oriented practice. It promotes the goal of greater mutual understanding
and the possibility of consensus among members of society.
Symbolic Interactionism
Symbolic interactionism provides a theoretical perspective that helps scholars
examine the relationship of individuals within their society. This perspective is
centred on the notion that communication—or the exchange of meaning through
language and symbols—is how people make sense of their social worlds. As
pointed out by Herman and Reynolds (1994), this viewpoint sees people as active
in shaping their world, rather than as entities who are acted upon by society
(Herman and Reynolds 1994). This approach looks at society and people from a
micro-level perspective.
George Herbert Mead (1863–1931) is considered one of the founders of symbolic
interactionism. His work in Mind, Self and Society (1934) on the “self” as a social
structure and on the stages of child development as a sequence of role-playing
capacities provides the classic analyses of the perspective.
His student Herbert Blumer (1900–1987) synthesized Mead’s work and
popularized the theory. Blumer coined the term “symbolic interactionism” and
identified its three basic premises:
 Humans act toward things on the basis of the meanings they ascribe to those
things.
 The meaning of such things is derived from, or arises out of, the social
interaction that one has with others and the society.
 These meanings are handled in, and modified through, an interpretative
process used by the person in dealing with the things he or she encounters
(Blumer 1969).
In other words, human interaction is not determined in the same manner as natural
events. Nor do people directly react to each other as forces acting upon forces or as
stimuli provoking automatic responses. Rather people interact indirectly, by
interpreting the meaning of each other’s actions, gestures, or words. Interaction
is symbolic in the sense that it occurs through the mediation, exchange, and
interpretation of symbols. One person’s action refers beyond itself to a meaning
that calls out for the response of the other: it indicates what the receiver is
supposed to do; it indicates what the actor intends to do; and together they form a
mutual definition of the situation, which enables joint action to take place. Social
life can be seen as the stringing together or aligning of multiple joint actions.
Social scientists who apply symbolic-interactionist thinking look for patterns of
interaction between individuals. Their studies often involve observation of one-on-
one interactions. For example, while a structural functionalist studying a political
protest might focus on the function protest plays in realigning the priorities of the
political system, a symbolic interactionist would be more interested in seeing the
ways in which individuals in the protesting group interact, or how the signs and
symbols protesters use enable a common definition of the situation—e.g., an
environmental or social justice “issue”—to get established.
The focus on the importance of symbols in building a society led sociologists like
Erving Goffman (1922–1982) to develop a framework called dramaturgical
analysis. Goffman used theatre as an analogy for social interaction and recognized
that people’s interactions showed patterns of cultural “scripts.” In social
encounters, individuals make a claim for a positive social status within the group—
they present a “face”—but it is never certain that their audience will accept their
claim. There is always the possibility that individuals will make a gaff that
prevents them from successfully maintaining face. They have to manage the
impression they are making in the same way and often using the same type of
“props” as an actor. Moreover, because it can be unclear what part a person may
play in a given situation, he or she has to improvise his or her role as the situation
unfolds. This led to Goffman’s focus on the ritual nature of social interaction—the
way in which the “scripts” of social encounters become routine, repetitive, and
unconscious. Nevertheless, the emphasis in Goffman’s analysis, as in symbolic
interactionism as a whole, is that the social encounter, and social reality itself, is
open and unpredictable. Social reality is not predetermined by structures,
functions, roles, or history (Goffman 1958).
Symbolic interactionism has also been important in bringing to light the
experiences and worlds of individuals who are typically excluded from official
accounts of the world. Howard Becker’s Outsiders (1963) for example described
the process of labelling in which individuals come to be characterized or labelled
as deviants by authorities. The sequence of events in which a young person is
picked up by police for an offence, defined as a “young offender,” processed by
the criminal justice system, and then introduced to the criminal subculture through
contact with experienced convicts is told from the subjective point of view of the
young person. The significance of labelling theory is to show that individuals are
not born deviant or criminal, but become criminal through an institutionalized
symbolic interaction with authorities. As Becker says:
…social groups create deviance by making rules whose infraction creates
deviance, and by applying those roles to particular people and labelling them as
outsiders. From this point of view, deviance is not a quality of the act the person
commits, but rather a consequence of the application by other of rules and
sanctions to an “offender.” The deviant is one to whom that label has been
successfully applied; deviant behavior is behaviour that people so label (1963).
Studies that use the symbolic interactionist perspective are more likely to use
qualitative research methods, such as in-depth interviews or participant
observation, because they seek to understand the symbolic worlds in which
research subjects live.
Criticism
Research done from this perspective is often scrutinized because of the difficulty
of remaining objective. Others criticize the extremely narrow focus on symbolic
interaction. Proponents, of course, consider this one of its greatest strengths.
One of the problems of sociology that focuses on micro-level interactions is that it
is difficult to generalize from very specific situations, involving very few
individuals, to make social scientific claims about the nature of society as a whole.
The danger is that, while the rich texture of face-to-face social life can be
examined in detail, the results will remain purely descriptive without any
explanatory or analytical strength. In a similar fashion, it is very difficult to get at
the historical context or relations of power that structure or condition face-to-face
symbolic interactions. The perspective on social life as an unstructured and
unconstrained domain of agency and subjective meanings has difficulty accounting
for the ways that social life does become structured and constrained.
August Comte: The Father of Sociology
The term sociology was first coined in 1780 by the French essayist Emmanuel-
Joseph Sieyès (1748–1836) in an unpublished manuscript (Fauré et al. 1999). In
1838, the term was reinvented by Auguste Comte (1798–1857). The contradictions
of Comte’s life and the times he lived through can be in large part read into the
concerns that led to his development of sociology. He was born in 1798, year 6 of
the new French Republic, to staunch monarchist and Catholic parents, who lived
comfortably off the father’s earnings as a minor bureaucrat in the tax office. Comte
originally studied to be an engineer, but after rejecting his parents’ conservative
views and declaring himself a republican and free spirit at the age of 13, he got
kicked out of school at 18 for leading a school riot, which ended his chances of
getting a formal education and a position as an academic or government official.
He became a secretary of the utopian socialist philosopher Claude Henri de
Rouvroy Comte de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) until they had a falling out in 1824
(after St. Simon perhaps purloined some of Comte’s essays and signed his own
name to them). Nevertheless, they both thought that society could be studied using
the same scientific methods utilized in the natural sciences. Comte also believed in
the potential of social scientists to work toward the betterment of society and
coined the slogan “order and progress” to reconcile the opposing progressive and
conservative factions that had divided the crisis-ridden, post-revolutionary French
society. Comte proposed a renewed, organic spiritual order in which the authority
of science would be the means to reconcile the people in each social strata with
their place in the order. It is a testament to his influence that the phrase “order and
progress” adorns the Brazilian coat of arms (Collins and Makowsky 1989).
Comte named the scientific study of social patterns positivism. He described his
philosophy in a well-attended and popular series of lectures, which he published
as The Course in Positive Philosophy (1830–1842) and A General View of
Positivism (1848). He believed that using scientific methods to reveal the laws by
which societies and individuals interact would usher in a new “positivist” age of
history. His main sociological theory was the law of three stages, which held that
all human societies and all forms of human knowledge evolve through three
distinct stages from primitive to advanced: the theological, the metaphysical, and
the positive. The key variable in defining these stages was the way a people
understand the concept of causation or think about their place in the world.
In the theological stage, humans explain causes in terms of the will of
anthropocentric gods (the gods cause things to happen). In the metaphysical
stage, humans explain causes in terms of abstract, “speculative” ideas like nature,
natural rights, or “self-evident” truths. This was the basis of his critique of the
Enlightenment philosophers whose ideas about natural rights and freedoms had led
to the French Revolution but also to the chaos of its aftermath. In his view, the
“negative” or metaphysical knowledge of the philosophers was based on dogmatic
ideas that could not be reconciled when they were in contraction. This lead to
irreconcilable conflict and moral anarchy. Finally, in the positive stage, humans
explain causes in terms of scientific procedures and laws (i.e., “positive”
knowledge based on propositions limited to what can be empirically observed).
Comte believed that this would be the final stage of human social evolution
because science would reconcile the division between political factions of order
and progress by eliminating the basis for moral and intellectual anarchy. The
application of positive philosophy would lead to the unification of society and of
the sciences (Comte 1830).
Although Comte’s positivism is a little odd by today’s standards, it inaugurated the
development of the positivist tradition within sociology. In principle, positivism is
the sociological perspective that attempts to approach the study of society in the
same way that the natural sciences approach the natural world. In fact, Comte’s
preferred term for this approach was “social physics”—the “sciences of
observation” applied to social phenomena, which he saw as the culmination of the
historical development of the sciences. More specifically, for Comte, positivism:
1. “Regards all phenomena as subjected to invariable natural laws”
2. Pursues “an accurate discovery of these laws, with a view of reducing them
to the smallest possible number”
3. Limits itself to analyzing the observable circumstances of phenomena and to
connecting them by the “natural relations of succession and resemblance”
instead of making metaphysical claims about their essential or divine nature
(Comte 1830)
While Comte never in fact conducted any social research and took, as the object of
analysis, the laws that governed what he called the general human “mind” of a
society (difficult to observe empirically), his notion of sociology as a positivist
science that might effectively socially engineer a better society was deeply
influential. Where his influence waned was a result of the way in which he became
increasingly obsessive and hostile to all criticism as his ideas progressed beyond
positivism as the “science of society” to positivism as the basis of a new cult-like,
technocratic “religion of humanity.” The new social order he imagined was deeply
conservative and hierarchical, a kind of a caste system with every level of society
obliged to reconcile itself with its “scientifically” allotted place. Comte imagined
himself at the pinnacle of society, taking the title of “Great Priest of Humanity.”
The moral and intellectual anarchy he decried would be resolved, but only because
the rule of sociologists would eliminate the need for unnecessary and divisive
democratic dialogue. Social order “must ever be incompatible with a perpetual
discussion of the foundations of society” (Comte 1830).
Karl Marx: The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing
Karl Marx (1818–1883) was a German philosopher and economist. In 1848 he and
Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) co-authored the Communist Manifesto. This book is
one of the most influential political manuscripts in history. It also presents in a
highly condensed form Marx’s theory of society, which differed from what Comte
proposed. Whereas Comte viewed the goal of sociology as recreating a unified,
post-feudal spiritual order that would help to institutionalize a new era of political
and social stability, Marx developed a critical analysis of capitalism that saw
the material or economic basis of inequality and power relations as the cause of
social instability and conflict. The focus of sociology, according to Marxist
historical materialism (the “materialist conception of history”), should be the
“ruthless critique of everything existing”. In this way the goal of sociology would
not simply be to scientifically analyze or objectively describe society, but to use a
rigorous scientific analysis as a basis to change it. This framework became the
foundation of contemporary critical sociology.
Marx rejected Comte’s positivism with its emphasis on describing the logical laws
of the general “mind.” For Marx, Comte’s sociology was a form of idealism, a
way of explaining the nature of society based on the ideas that people hold. In an
idealist perspective, people invent ideas of “freedom,” “morality,” or “causality,”
etc. and then change their lives and society’s institutions to conform to these ideas.
This type of understanding could only ever lead to a partial analysis of social life
according to Marx. Instead he believed that societies grew and changed as a result
of the struggles of different social classes over control of the means of production.
Historical materialism is an approach to understanding society that explains social
change and human ideas in terms of underlying changes in the “mode of
production” or economy; i.e., the historical transformations in the way human
societies act upon their material world (the environment and its resources) in order
to use it to meet their needs. Marx argues therefore that the consciousness or ideas
people have about the world develop from changes in this material, economic
basis. As such, the ideas of people in hunter-gatherer societies will be different
than the ideas of people in feudal societies, which in turn will be different from the
ideas of people in capitalist societies.
The source of historical change and transition between different historical types of
society was class struggle. At the time Marx was developing his theories, the
Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism had led to a massive increase in the
wealth of society but also massive disparities in wealth and power between the
owners of the factories (the bourgeoisie) and workers (the
proletariat). Capitalism was still a relatively new economic system, an economic
system characterized by private or corporate ownership of goods and the means to
produce them. It was also a system that was inherently unstable and prone to crisis,
yet increasingly global in its reach.
As Marx demonstrated in his masterpiece Capital (1867), capitalism’s instability is
based on the processes by which capitalists accumulate their capital or assets,
namely by engaging in cold-blooded competition with each other through the sale
of commodities in the competitive market. There is a continuous need to expand
markets for goods and to reduce the costs of production in order to create ever
cheaper and more competitive products. This leads to a downward pressure on
wages, the introduction of labour-saving technologies that increase unemployment,
the failure of non-competitive businesses, periodic economic crises and recessions,
and the global expansion of capitalism as businesses seek markets to exploit and
cheaper sources of labour. Yet as he pointed out, it was the workers’ labour that
actually produces wealth. The capitalists who owned the factories and means of
production were in a sense parasitic on workers’ labour. The injustice of the
system was palpable. Marx predicted that inequalities of capitalism would become
so extreme that workers would eventually recognize their common class interests,
develop a common “class consciousness” or understanding of their situation, and
revolt. Class struggle would lead to the destruction of the institution of private
capital and to the final stage in human history, which he called “communism.”
Although Marx did not call his analysis sociology, his sociological innovation was
to provide a social analysis of the economic system. Whereas Adam Smith (1723–
1790) and the political economists of the 19th century tried to explain the
economic laws of supply and demand solely as a market mechanism (similar to the
abstract discussions of stock market indices and investment returns in business
pages of newspapers today), Marx’s analysis showed the socialrelationships that
had created the market system and the social repercussions of their operation. As
such, his analysis of modern society was not static or simply descriptive. He was
able to put his finger on the underlying dynamism and continuous change that
characterized capitalist society. In a famous passage from The Communist
Manifesto, he and Engels described the restless and destructive penchant for
change inherent in the capitalist mode of production:
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of
production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole
relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered
form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial
classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all
social conditions, everlasting uncertainty, and agitation distinguish the bourgeois
epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of
ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed
ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all
which is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses
his real condition of life and his relations with his kind (Marx and Engels 1848).
Marx was also able to create an effective basis for critical sociology in that what he
aimed for in his analysis was, as he put it in another letter to Arnold Ruge, “the
self-clarification of the struggles and wishes of the age.” While he took a clear and
principled value position in his critique, he did not do so dogmatically, based on an
arbitrary moral position of what he personally thought was good and bad. He felt
rather that a critical social theory must engage in clarifying and supporting the
issues of social justice that were inherent within the existing struggles and wishes
of the age. In his own work, he endeavoured to show how the variety of specific
work actions, strikes, and revolts by workers in different occupations for better
pay, safer working conditions, shorter hours, the right to unionize, etc. contained
the seeds for a vision of universal equality, collective justice, and ultimately the
ideal of a classless society.
Émile Durkheim: The Pathologies of the Social Order
Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) helped establish sociology as a formal academic
discipline by establishing the first European department of sociology at the
University of Bordeaux in 1895 and by publishing his Rules of the Sociological
Method in 1895. He was born to a Jewish family in the Lorraine province of
France (one of the two provinces along with Alsace that were lost to the Germans
in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871). With the German occupation of
Lorraine, the Jewish community suddenly became subject to sporadic anti-Semitic
violence, with the Jews often being blamed for the French defeat and the
economic/political instability that followed. Durkheim attributed this strange
experience of anti-Semitism and scapegoating to the lack of moral purpose in
modern society.
As in Comte’s time, France in the late 19th century was the site of major upheavals
and sharp political divisions: the loss of the Franco-Prussian War, the Paris
Commune (1871) in which 20,000 workers died, the fall and capture of Emperor
Napoleon III (Napoleon I’s nephew), the creation of the Third Republic, and the
Dreyfus Affair. This undoubtedly led to the focus in Durkheim’s sociology on
themes of moral anarchy, decadence, disunity, and disorganization. For Durkheim,
sociology was a scientific but also a “moral calling” and one of the central tasks of
the sociologist was to determine “the causes of the general temporary malajustment
being undergone by European societies and remedies which may relieve it” (1897).
In this respect, Durkheim represented the sociologist as a kind of medical doctor,
studying social pathologies of the moral order and proposing social remedies and
cures. He saw healthy societies as stable, while pathological societies experienced
a breakdown in social norms between individuals and society. The state of
normlessness or anomie—the lack of norms that give clear direction and purpose
to individual actions—was the result of “society’s insufficient presence in
individuals” (1897).
His father was the eighth in a line of father-son rabbis. Although Émile was the
second son, he was chosen to pursue his father’s vocation and was given a good
religious and secular education. He abandoned the idea of a religious or rabbinical
career, however, and became very secular in his outlook. His sociological analysis
of religion in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912) was an example
of this. In this work he was not interested in the theological questions of God’s
existence or purpose, but in developing a very secular, sociological question:
Whether God exists or not, how does religion function socially in a society? He
argued that beneath the irrationalism and the “barbarous and fantastic rites” of both
the most primitive and the most modern religions is their ability to satisfy real
social and human needs. “There are no religions which are false” (Durkheim 1912)
he said. Religion performs the key function of providing social solidarity in a
society. The rituals, the worship of icons, and the belief in supernatural beings
“excite, maintain or recreate certain mental states” (Durkheim 1912) that bring
people together, provide a ritual and symbolic focus, and unify them. This type of
analysis became the basis of the functionalist perspective in sociology. He
explained the existence and persistence of religion on the basis of the
necessary function it performed in unifying society.
Durkheim was also a key figure in the development of positivist sociology. He did
not adopt the term positivism, because of the connection it had with Comte’s quasi-
religious sociological cult. However, in Rules of the Sociological Method he
defined sociology as the study of objective social facts. Social facts are those
things like law, custom, morality, religious beliefs and practices, language, systems
of money, credit and debt, business or professional practices, etc. that are defined
externally to the individual. Social facts:
 Precede the individual and will continue to exist after he or she is gone
 Consist of details and obligations of which individuals are frequently
unaware
 Are endowed with an external coercive power by reason of which
individuals are controlled
For Durkheim, social facts were like the facts of the natural sciences. They could
be studied without reference to the subjective experience of individuals. He argued
that “social facts must be studied as things, that is, as realities external to the
individual” (Durkheim 1895). Individuals experience them as obligations, duties,
and restraints on their behaviour, operating independently of their will. They are
hardly noticeable when individuals consent to them but provoke reaction when
individuals resist.
In this way, Durkheim was very influential in defining the subject matter of the
new discipline of sociology. For Durkheim, sociology was not about just any
phenomena to do with the life of human beings but only those phenomena which
pertained exclusively to a social level of analysis. It was not about the biological or
psychological dynamics of human life, for example, but about the social
facts through which the lives of individuals were constrained. Moreover, the
dimension of human experience described by social facts had to be explained in its
own terms. It could not be explained by biological drives or psychological
characteristics of individuals. It was a dimension of reality sui generis (of its own
kind, unique in its characteristics). It could not be explained by, or reduced to, its
individual components without missing its most important features. As Durkheim
put it, “a social fact can only be explained by another social fact” (Durkheim
1895).
This is the framework of Durkheim’s famous study of suicide. In Suicide: A Study
in Sociology (1897), Durkheim attempted to demonstrate the effectiveness of his
rules of social research by examining suicide statistics in different police districts.
Suicide is perhaps the most personal and most individual of all acts. Its motives
would seem to be absolutely unique to the individual and to individual
psychopathology. However, what Durkheim observed was that statistical rates of
suicide remained fairly constant year by year and region by region. There was no
correlation between rates of suicide and rates of psychopathology. Suicide rates did
vary, however, according to the social context of the suicides: namely the religious
affiliation of suicides. Protestants had higher rates of suicide than Catholics,
whereas Catholics had higher rates of suicide than Jews. Durkheim argued that the
key factor that explained the difference in suicide rates (i.e., the statistical rates,
not the purely individual motives for the suicides) were the different degrees of
social integration of the different religious communities, measured by the amount
of ritual and degree of mutual involvement in religious practice. The religious
groups had differing levels of anomie, or normlessness, which Durkheim
associated with high rates of suicide. Durkheim’s study was unique and insightful
because he did not try to explain suicide rates in terms of individual
psychopathology. Instead, he regarded the regularity of the suicide rates as a
factual order, implying “the existence of collective tendencies exterior to the
individual” (Durkheim 1897), and explained their variation with respect to another
social fact: “Suicide varies inversely with the degree of integration of the social
groups of which the individual forms a part” (Durkheim 1897).
Max Weber: Verstehende Soziologie
Prominent sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) established a sociology
department in Germany at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich in 1919.
Weber wrote on many topics related to sociology including political change in
Russia, the condition of German farm workers, and the history of world religions.
He was also a prominent public figure, playing an important role in the German
peace delegation in Versailles and in drafting the ill-fated German (Weimar)
constitution following the defeat of Germany in World War I.
Weber is known best for his 1904 book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism. He noted that in modern industrial societies, business leaders and
owners of capital, the higher grades of skilled labour, and the most technically and
commercially trained personnel were overwhelmingly Protestant. He also noted the
uneven development of capitalism in Europe, and in particular how capitalism
developed first in those areas dominated by Protestant sects. He asked, “Why were
the districts of highest economic development at the same time particularly
favourable to a revolution in the Church?” (i.e., the Protestant Reformation (1517–
1648)) (Weber 1904). His answer focused on the development of the Protestant
ethic—the duty to “work hard in one’s calling”—in particular Protestant sects such
as Calvinism, Pietism, and Baptism.
As opposed to the traditional teachings of the Catholic Church in
which poverty was a virtue and labour simply a means for maintaining the
individual and community, the Protestant sects began to see hard, continuous
labour as a spiritual end in itself. Hard labour was firstly an ascetic technique of
worldly renunciation and a defence against temptations and distractions: the
unclean life, sexual temptations, and religious doubts. Secondly, the Protestant
sects believed that God’s disposition toward the individual was predetermined and
could never be known or influenced by traditional Christian practices like
confession, penance, and buying indulgences. However, one’s chosen occupation
was a “calling” given by God, and the only sign of God’s favour or recognition in
this world was to receive good fortune in one’s calling. Thus material success and
the steady accumulation of wealth through personal effort and prudence was seen
as a sign of an individual’s state of grace. Weber argued that the ethic, or way of
life, that developed around these beliefs was a key factor in creating the conditions
for both the accumulation of capital, as the goal of economic activity, and for the
creation of an industrious and disciplined labour force.
In this regard, Weber has often been seen as presenting an idealist explanation of
the development of capital, as opposed to Marx’s historical materialist explanation.
It is an element of cultural belief that leads to social change rather than the
concrete organization and class struggles of the economic structure. It might be
more accurate, however, to see Weber’s work building on Marx’s and to see his
Protestant ethic thesis as part of a broader set of themes concerning the process of
rationalization. Why did the Western world modernize and develop modern
science, industry, and democracy when, for centuries, the Orient, the Indian
subcontinent, and the Middle East were technically, scientifically, and culturally
more advanced than the West? Weber argued that the modern forms of society
developed in the West because of the process of rationalization: the general
tendency of modern institutions and most areas of life to be transformed by the
application of instrumental reason—rational bureaucratic organization, calculation,
and technical reason—and the overcoming of “magical” thinking (which we earlier
referred to as the “disenchantment of the world”). As the impediments toward
rationalization were removed, organizations and institutions were restructured on
the principle of maximum efficiency and specialization, while older, traditional
(inefficient) types of organization were gradually eliminated.
The irony of the Protestant ethic as one stage in this process was that the
rationalization of capitalist business practices and organization of labour eventually
dispensed with the religious goals of the ethic. At the end of The Protestant Ethic
and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber pessimistically describes the fate of modern
humanity as an “iron cage.” The iron cage is Weber’s metaphor for the condition
of modern humanity in a technical, rationally defined, and “efficiently” organized
society. Having forgotten its spiritual or other purposes of life, humanity succumbs
to an order “now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine
production” (Weber 1904). The modern subject in the iron cage is “only a single
cog in an ever-moving mechanism which prescribes to him an essentially fixed
route of march” (Weber 1922).
Weber also made a major contribution to the methodology of sociological research.
Along with the philosophers Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) and Heinrich Rickert
(1863–1936), Weber believed that it was difficult if not impossible to apply natural
science methods to accurately predict the behaviour of groups as positivist
sociology hoped to do. They argued that the influence of culture on human
behaviour had to be taken into account. What was distinct about human behaviour
was that it is essentially meaningful. Human behaviour could not be understood
independently of the meanings that individuals attributed to it. A Martian’s
analysis of the activities in a skateboard park would be hopelessly confused unless
it understood that the skateboarders were motivated by the excitement of risk
taking and the pleasure in developing skills. This insight into the meaningful nature
of human behaviour even applied to the sociologists themselves, who, they
believed, should be aware of how their own cultural biases could influence their
research. To deal with this problem, Weber and Dilthey introduced the concept
of Verstehen, a German word that means to understand in a deep way. In
seeking Verstehen, outside observers of a social world—an entire culture or a small
setting—attempt to understand it empathetically from an insider’s point of view.
In his essay “The Methodological Foundations of Sociology,” Weber described
sociology as “a science which attempts the interpretive understanding of social
action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects”
(Weber 1922). In this way he delimited the field that sociology studies in a manner
almost opposite to that of Émile Durkheim. Rather than defining sociology as the
study of the unique dimension of external social facts, sociology was concerned
with social action: actions to which individuals attach subjective meanings.
“Action is social in so far as, by virtue of the subjective meaning attached to it by
the acting individual (or individuals), it takes account of the behaviour of others
and is thereby oriented in its course” (Weber 1922). The actions of the young
skateboarders can be explained because they hold the experienced boarders in
esteem and attempt to emulate their skills even if it means scraping their bodies on
hard concrete from time to time. Weber and other like-minded sociologists
founded interpretive sociology whereby social researchers strive to find
systematic means to interpret and describe the subjective meanings behind social
processes, cultural norms, and societal values. This approach led to research
methods like ethnography, participant observation, and phenomenological analysis
whose aim was not to generalize or predict (as in positivistic social science), but to
systematically gain an in-depth understanding of social worlds. The natural
sciences may be precise, but from the interpretive sociology point of view their
methods confine them to study only the external characteristics of things.