{"id":38,"date":"2023-08-09T10:28:24","date_gmt":"2023-08-09T10:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontosociology3rdedition\/chapter\/1-2-the-history-of-sociology\/"},"modified":"2024-12-11T17:38:36","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T17:38:36","slug":"1-2-the-history-of-sociology","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/introductiontosociology3rdedition\/chapter\/1-2-the-history-of-sociology\/","title":{"raw":"1.2. The History of Sociology","rendered":"1.2. The History of Sociology"},"content":{"raw":"

<\/h1>\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_37\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"625\"]\"\" Figure 1.6<\/strong> People have been thinking like sociologists long before sociology became a separate academic discipline. Plato and Aristotle, Herodotus, Ma Duan-Lin, Ibn Khaldun and Montesquieu (from left to right) all set the stage for modern sociology. (Images (a) Public Domain<\/a>,(b) CC BY-SA 4.0<\/a>, (d) CC BY-SA 3.0<\/a>, (e) via Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain<\/a>, (c) courtesy of YouTube, Fair Dealing<\/a>.)[\/caption]\r\n\r\nSince ancient times, people have been fascinated by the relationship between individuals and the societies to which they belong. The ancient Greeks might be said to have provided the foundations of sociology through the distinction they drew between physis <\/i>(nature) and nomos <\/i>(law or custom). Whereas nature or physis<\/i> for the Greeks was \u201cwhat emerges from itself\u201d without human intervention, nomos <\/i>in the form of laws, customs, or ways of life were human conventions designed to shape human behaviour. The modern sociological term \u201cnorm\u201d <\/i>(i.e., a social rule that regulates human behaviour) comes from the Greek term nomos. Histories <\/i>by\u00a0Herodotus (484\u2013425 BCE)\u00a0<\/i>was a proto-anthropological work that described the great variations in the nomos <\/i>of different ancient societies around the Mediterranean, indicating that human social life was not a product of nature but a product of human creation. If human social life was the product of an invariable human or biological nature, all cultures would be the same. The concerns of the later Greek philosophers \u2014 Socrates (469\u2013399 BCE), Plato (428\u2013347 BCE), and Aristotle (384\u2013322 BCE) \u2014 with the ideal form of human community (the polis <\/i>or city-state) can be derived from the ethical dilemmas of this difference between human nature and human norms. As Aristotle (1984) puts it, humans create the polis<\/em> or community \"not only in view of living but rather for living well.\" Moreover, in a very modern sociological formulation, he argued \"the polis<\/em> is by nature prior to the family [oikia<\/em>] and to each individual, because the whole is necessarily prior to the parts.\"\r\n\r\nIn the 13th century, Ma Duan-Lin, a Chinese historian, first recognized social dynamics as an underlying component of historical development in his seminal encyclopedia, General Study of Literary Remains<\/i>. The study charted the historical development of Chinese state administration from antiquity in a manner very similar to contemporary institutional analyses.\r\n\r\nThe next century saw the emergence of the historian some consider the world\u2019s first sociologist, the Berber scholar Ibn Khaldun (1332\u20131406) of Tunisia. His Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History <\/i>is known for going beyond descriptive history to an analysis of historical processes of change based on his insights into \u201cthe nature of things which are born of civilization\u201d (Khaldun quoted in Becker and Barnes, 1961). Key to his analysis was the distinction between the sedentary life of cities and the nomadic life of pastoral peoples like the Bedouin and Berbers. The nomads, who exist independent of external authority, developed a social bond based on blood lineage<\/em> and \u201cesprit de corps\u201d ('Asabijja)<\/em>, which enabled them to mobilize quickly and act in a unified and concerted manner in response to the rugged circumstances of desert life. The sedentary population of the city entered into a different cycle in which esprit de corps is subsumed to institutional power and the intrigues of political factions.\u00a0 The need to be focused on subsistence is replaced by a trend toward increasing luxury, ease, and refinements of taste. The relationship between the two poles of existence, nomadism and sedentary life, was at the basis of the development and decay of civilizations (Becker and Barnes, 1961).\r\n\r\nFinally, the French political philosopher, Montesquieu (1689-1755) outlined an early sociological framework in his comparative and historical classification of political structures. In his attempt to define the \"laws of laws,\" the social determinants that caused different legal structures and national identities to develop in different jurisdictions, he pioneered a uniquely sociological approach to variations in human society.\r\n\r\nHowever, it was not until the 19th century that the basis of the modern discipline of sociology could be said to have been truly established. The impetus for the ideas that culminated in sociology can be found in the three major transformations that defined modern society and the culture of modernity: the development of modern science from the 16th century onward, the emergence of democratic forms of government with the American and French Revolutions (1775\u20131783 and 1789\u20131799 respectively), and the Industrial Revolution beginning in the 18th century. Not only was the framework for sociological knowledge established in these events, but also the initial motivation for creating a science of society. Early sociologists like Comte and Marx sought to formulate a rational, evidence-based response to the experience of massive social dislocation brought about by the transition from the European feudal era to capitalism. This was a period of unprecedented social problems, from the breakdown of local feudal communities to the hyper-exploitation of industrial labourers. Whether the intention was to restore order to the chaotic disintegration of society, as in Comte\u2019s case, or to provide the basis for a revolutionary transformation in Marx\u2019s, a rational and scientifically comprehensive knowledge of society and its processes was required. It was in this context that \u201csociety\u201d itself, in the modern sense of the word, became visible as a phenomenon to early investigators of the social condition.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_37\" align=\"aligncenter\" width=\"600\"]\"A Figure 1.7<\/strong> Newton<\/em>, William Blake, 1795 (photo courtesy of William Blake\/Wikimedia Commons.) Public Domain<\/a>[\/caption]\r\n\r\nThe development of modern science<\/em> provided the model of knowledge needed for sociology to move beyond earlier moral, philosophical, and religious types of reflection on the human condition. Key to the development of science was the technological mindset that Max Weber termed the disenchantment of the world<\/b>: \u201cprincipally there are no mysterious incalculable forces that come into play, but rather one can, in principle, master all things by calculation\u201d (1919). The focus of knowledge shifted from intuiting the intentions of spirits and gods to systematically observing and testing the world of things through science and technology. Modern science abandoned the medieval view of the world in which God, \u201cthe unmoved mover,\u201d defined the natural and social world as a changeless, cyclical creation, hierarchically ordered and given purpose by divine will. Instead, modern science combined two philosophical traditions that had historically been at odds: Plato\u2019s rationalism<\/strong> and Aristotle\u2019s empiricism <\/strong>(Berman, 1981). Rationalism sought the laws that governed the truth of reason and ideas, and in the hands of early scientists like Galileo and Newton, found its highest form of expression in the logical formulations of mathematics. Empiricism sought to discover the laws of the operation of the world through the careful, methodical, and detailed observation of the world. The new scientific worldview therefore combined the clear and logically coherent, conceptual formulation of propositions from rationalism, with an empirical method of inquiry based on observation through the senses. Sociology adopted these core principles to emphasize that claims about social life had to be clearly formulated and based on evidence-based procedures. It also gave sociology a technological framework as a type of knowledge which could be used to solve social problems.\r\n\r\nThe emergence of democratic forms of government<\/em> in the 18th\u00a0century demonstrated that humans had the capacity to change the world. The rigid hierarchy of medieval society was not a God-given eternal order, but a human order that could be challenged and improved upon through human intervention. Through the revolutionary process of democratization, society came to be seen as both historical <\/i>and the product<\/i> of human endeavours. <\/i>Age of Enlightenment philosophers like Locke, Voltaire, Montaigne, and Rousseau developed general principles that could be used to explain social life. Their emphasis shifted from the histories and exploits of the aristocracy to the life of ordinary people. Mary Wollstonecraft\u2019s A Vindication of the Rights of Women <\/i>(1792) extended the critical analysis of her male Enlightenment contemporaries to the situation of women. Significantly for modern sociology, they proposed that the use of reason could be applied to address social ills and to emancipate humanity from servitude. Wollstonecraft for example argued that simply allowing women to have a proper education would enable them to contribute to the improvement of society, especially through their influence on children. On the other hand, the bloody experience of the democratic revolutions, particularly the French Revolution, which resulted in the \u201cReign of Terror\u201d and ultimately Napoleon\u2019s attempt to subjugate Europe, also provided a cautionary tale for the early sociologists about the need for sober scientific assessment of empirical evidence to guide public policy and restrain excesses of power.\r\n\r\nThe Industrial Revolution<\/em> in a strict sense refers to the development of industrial methods of production, the introduction of industrial machinery, and the organization of labour to serve new manufacturing systems. These economic changes are emblematic of the massive transformation of human life brought about by the creation of wage labour, capitalist competition, increased mobility, urbanization, individualism, and all the social problems they wrought: poverty, exploitation, dangerous working conditions, crime, pollution, disease, and the loss of family and other traditional support networks, etc. It was a time of great social and political upheaval with the rise of empires that exposed many people \u2014 for the first time \u2014 to societies and cultures other than their own. Millions of people were moving into cities and many people were turning away from their traditional religious beliefs. Wars, strikes, revolts, and revolutionary actions were reactions to underlying social tensions that had never existed before and called for critical examination. August Comte in particular envisioned the new science of sociology as the antidote to conditions that he described as \u201cmoral anarchy,\u201d whereas Marx saw its potential to determine paths to social liberation.\r\n\r\nSociology therefore emerged; firstly, as an extension of the new worldview of science; secondly, as a part of the Enlightenment project and its focus on historical change, social injustice, and the possibilities of social reform; and thirdly, as a crucial response to the new and unprecedented types of social problems that appeared in the 19th\u00a0century with the Industrial Revolution. It did not emerge as a unified science, however, as its founders brought distinctly different perspectives to its early formulations.\r\n

August Comte: The Father of Sociology<\/h1>\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_37\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"250\"]\"""\" Figure 1.8<\/strong> Auguste Comte is considered by many to be the father of sociology (photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.) Public Domain<\/a>[\/caption]\r\n\r\nThe term sociology was first coined in 1780 by the French essayist Emmanuel-Joseph Siey\u00e8s (1748\u20131836) in an unpublished manuscript (Faur\u00e9 et al., 1999). In 1838, the term was reinvented by Auguste Comte (1798\u20131857). The contradictions of Comte\u2019s 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. They lived comfortably off his father's earnings as a minor bureaucrat in the tax office. Comte originally studied to be an engineer, but after rejecting his parents\u2019 conservative, monarchist views, he declared himself a republican and free spirit at the age of 13 and was eventually kicked out of school at 18 for leading a school riot. This ended his chances of getting a formal education and a position as an academic or government official.\r\n\r\nHe became a secretary to the utopian socialist philosopher Henri de Saint-Simon (1760\u20131825) until they had a falling out in 1824 (after St. Simon reputedly purloined some of Comte\u2019s 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 \u201corder and progress\u201d 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 create a rational social order. Through science, each social strata would be reconciled with their place in a hierarchical social order. It is a testament to his influence in the 19th century that the phrase \u201corder and progress\u201d adorns the Brazilian coat of arms (Collins and Makowsky, 1989).\r\n\r\nComte named the scientific study of social patterns positivism<\/b>. He described his philosophy in a well-attended and popular series of lectures, which he published as The Course in Positive Philosophy<\/i> (1830\u20131842) and A General View of Positivism<\/i> (1848\/1977). He believed that using scientific methods to reveal the laws by which societies and individuals interact would usher in a new \u201cpositivist\u201d age of history. In principle, positivism, or what Comte called \"social physics,\" proposed that the study of society could be conducted in the same way that the natural sciences approach the natural world.\r\n\r\nWhile Comte never in fact conducted any social research, 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 \u201cscience of society\u201d to positivism as the basis of a new cult-like, technocratic \u201creligion of humanity.\u201d 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 \u201cscientifically\u201d allotted place. Comte imagined himself at the pinnacle of society, taking the title of \u201cGreat Priest of Humanity.\u201d The moral and intellectual anarchy he decried would be resolved through the rule of sociologists who would eliminate the need for unnecessary and divisive democratic dialogue. Social order \u201cmust ever be incompatible with a perpetual discussion of the foundations of society\u201d (Comte, 1830\/1975).\r\n

Karl Marx: The Ruthless Critique of Everything Existing<\/h1>\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_37\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"300\"]\"""\" Figure 1.9<\/strong> Karl Marx was one of the founders of sociology. His ideas about social conflict are still relevant today (photo courtesy of John Mayall\/Wikimedia Commons.) Public Domain<\/a>[\/caption]\r\n\r\nKarl Marx (1818\u20131883) was a German philosopher and economist. In 1848, he and Friedrich Engels (1820\u20131895) co-authored the Communist Manifesto<\/i>. 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<\/i> 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 <\/i>or economic<\/i> basis of inequality and power relations as the cause of social instability and conflict. The focus of sociology, or what Marx called historical materialism <\/b>(the \u201cmaterialist conception of history\u201d), should be the \u201cruthless critique of everything existing,\u201d as he said in a letter to his friend Arnold Ruge (1802-1880). 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<\/b>.\r\n\r\nAlthough Marx did not call his analysis \"sociology,\" his sociological innovation was to provide a social<\/i> analysis of the economic<\/i> system. Adam Smith (1723\u20131790) 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 the business pages of newspapers today. Marx\u2019s analysis showed the social<\/i> relationships<\/i> that had created the market system, and the social repercussions<\/i> 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.\r\n\r\nMarx 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, \u201cthe self-clarification of the struggles and wishes of the age.\u201d 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 \u2014 for better pay, safer working conditions, shorter hours, the right to unionize, etc. \u2014 contained the seeds for a vision of universal equality, collective justice, and ultimately the ideal of a classless society.\r\n

Harriet Martineau: The First Woman Sociologist?<\/h1>\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_37\" align=\"alignright\" width=\"241\"]\"Painted Figure 1.10<\/strong> Harriet Martineau portrait by Richard Evans, 1834 (image courtesy of National Portrait Gallery: NPG 1085 [London]\/ Wikimedia Commons.) Public Domain<\/a>[\/caption]Harriet Martineau (1802\u20131876) was one of the first women sociologists in the 19th\u00a0century. There are a number of other women who might compete with her for the title of the first <\/i>woman sociologist, such as Catherine Macaulay, Mary Wollstonecraft, Flora Tristan, and Beatrice Webb, but Martineau\u2019s specifically sociological credentials are strong. She was for a long time known principally for her English translation of Comte\u2019s Course in Positive Philosophy. <\/i>Through this popular translation, she introduced the concept of sociology as a methodologically rigorous discipline to an English-speaking audience. But she also created a body of her own work in the tradition of the great social reform<\/b> movements of the 19th\u00a0century, and introduced a sorely missing woman\u2019s perspective into the discourse on society.\r\n\r\nIt was a testament to her abilities that after she became impoverished at the age of 24 with the death of her father, brother, and fianc\u00e9, she was able to earn her own income as the first woman journalist in Britain, and to write under her own name. From the age of 12, she suffered from severe hearing loss and was obliged to use a large ear trumpet to converse. She impressed a wide audience with a series of articles on political economy in 1832. In 1834, she left England to engage in two years of study of the new republic of the United States and its emerging institutions: prisons, insane asylums, factories, farms, Southern plantations, universities, hospitals, and churches. On the basis of extensive research, interviews, and observations, she published Society in America <\/i>and worked with abolitionists on the social reform of slavery (Zeitlin, 1997). She also worked for social reform in the situation of women: the right to vote, have an education, pursue an occupation, and enjoy the same legal rights as men. Together with Florence Nightingale, she worked on the development of public health care, which led to early formulations of the welfare system in Britain (McDonald, 1998).\r\n

\u00c9mile Durkheim: The Pathologies of the Social Order<\/h1>\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_37\" align=\"alignleft\" width=\"229\"]\"""\" Figure 1.11<\/strong> \u00c9mile Durkheim (photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.) CC BY SA 4.0<\/a>[\/caption]\r\n\r\n\u00c9mile Durkheim (1858\u20131917) 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<\/i> 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\u20131871). 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.\r\n\r\nAs in Comte\u2019s 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\u2019s nephew), the creation of the Third Republic, and the Dreyfus Affair. This undoubtedly led to the focus in Durkheim\u2019s sociology on themes of moral anarchy, decadence, disunity, and disorganization. For Durkheim, sociology was a scientific but also a \u201cmoral calling\u201d and one of the central tasks of the sociologist was to determine \u201cthe causes of the general temporary maladjustment being undergone by European societies and remedies which may relieve it\u201d (1897\/1951). In this respect, Durkheim represented the sociologist as a kind of medical doctor, studying social<\/i> 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. He described this breakdown as a state of normlessness or anomie\u00a0<\/b>\u2014 a lack of norms that give clear direction and purpose to individual actions. As he put it, anomie was the result of \u201csociety\u2019s insufficient presence in individuals\u201d (1897\/1951).\r\n

Key to Durkheim's approach was the development of a framework for sociology based on the analysis of social facts <\/strong>and social functions. <\/strong>Social facts are those things like law, custom, morality, religious rites, language, money, business practices, etc. that can be defined externally<\/em> to the individual. Social facts:<\/p>\r\n\r\n