Sociology

4 fathers of Sociology: Max Weber, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Auguste Comte

Sociological Imagination

 Coined by Writh Mills

 "the awareness of the relationship between personal experience and the wider society.”
 The application of imaginative thought to the asking and answering of sociological questions. 

Auguste Comte

 Found the science of sociology

 Founder of positivism
 Social engineering
 Coined the term ‘Sociology’
 His emphasis on systematic observation and social order
 He considers sociologists as high priests
 Positivism – The truth only comes from scientific knowledge.
 Comte wrote the System of Positive Polity. In his formulation of a “religion of humanity,” Comte
proposed a religious order based on reason and humanity, emphasizing morality as the
cornerstone of human political organization.
 He divided Sociology into 2 main branches:
o Social statics – study of the forces that hold society together
o Social dynamics – study of the causes of social change

Harriet Martineau

 First woman sociologist

 First to translate Comte’s work from French to English
 She observes social practices and their effects on society
 Examined social class, religion, suicide, national character, domestic relations and how these
elements affected social problems and individuals.
 She wrote the book “Illustrations of Political Economy”

Karl Marx

 Father of Communism and conflict theory

 Conflict theory states that tensions and conflicts arise when resources, status, and power are
unevenly distributed between groups in society and that these conflicts become the engine for
social change.
 focused on the causes and consequences of class conflict between the 2 social classes:
o bourgeoisie/capitalists (the owners of the means of production and the capitalists)
o proletariat (the working class and the poor).
 Class conflict can be overcome by communism
 Communism – Collective ownership, opposes private ownership, classes are eliminated
Emile Durkheim

 Ideas and theories

 he introduced the concept of "anomie", or the breakdown of the influence of social norms on
individuals within a society.
 He thought that the economic system makes people commit suicide
 Studying social reality:
o Social facts – crime rates, divorce –shared expectations –group
o Emergent properties – influence group members –elitism and solidarity
o Social groups – people interact in a micro-level
o Mechanical solidarity – links through beliefs –people think the same about lots of things
o Organic solidarity – united in interdependence –links through differences
 Different circumstances influence behavior

Max Weber

 Ideas on bureaucracy
 Direct knowledge of pure fact is not possible
 Theorized social class
 2 aspects to social reality:
o Objective
o Subjective
 Understand the meaning that people use in order to understand social relations
 Sociology should concern itself with studying individually than with groups
 Looking at how individuals act
 Verstehen –interpretative understanding –in order to study subjective social reality
-It is understanding the meaning of an action from the actor’s point of view

George Herbert Mead

 Symbolic interactionism theory –

o symbols, interaction, and language are responsible for shaping society
o analyzes society by addressing the subjective meanings that people impose on objects,
events, and behaviors.

Talcott Parsons

 Functionalist approach –macro-level paradigm that explains the relations within society
 Explains functionalism in terms of the stability and changes in roles, groups, and institutions
 External (society), not internal (individual)

Robert K. Merton

 Structural functional approach

 Manifest function – intended function of social policies, processes, or actions that are
consciously and deliberately designed to be beneficial in its effect on society. 
 Latent function – not consciously intended, but that, nonetheless, has a beneficial effect on
society. 
 Dysfunction - type of unintended outcome that is harmful in nature.