zimsec a level sociology notes perspectives in sociology
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Structuralist perspective to studying human behaviour.
CIE A-Level Sociology: Religion, Education and Media
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1: DEFINATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY
According to Chris Livesey (2014) sociology is the study of how membership of social groups
(social institutions), e.g. families, schools and the workplaces etc. influence people’s behavior.
Sociology involves creating factual knowledge on how and why people behave in a particular
way. Factual knowledge is supported by evidence that has been systematically created and tested.
Thus sociology is a reasoned and a rigorous study of social life.
Other definitions.
1. The word ‘sociology’ comes from Latin word ‘socious’ means ‘society’ and Greek word ‘logus’
means ‘study’. Therefore Sociology is study of society
2. Sociology broadly defines as “the science of society”.
3. August Comte defines sociology as the science of social phenomena “subject to natural and
invariable laws, the discovery of which is the object of investigation”.
4. Max Weber defines sociology as “the science which attempts the interpretative understanding of
social action in order thereby to arrive at a casual explanation of its course and effect”.
5. Kingsley Davis defines “sociology is a general science of society”.
6. Emile Durkheim “sociology as the study of social facts”.
7. R.E Park and F.W. Burgess “sociology is the science of collective behavior”.
8. Gillin and Gillin “sociology in its broadest sense may be said to be the study of interaction arising
from the association of living beings”.
9. Small defines “sociology as the science of social relations”.
10. Arnold Green “sociology is the synthesizing and generalizing science of man in all his social
relationships”.
11. Marshal Jones defines sociology as “the study of man-in-relationship to men”.
12. W.F. Ogburn “sociology is a body of learning about society. It is a description of ways to make
society better. It is social ethics, a social philosophy, generally; however, it is defined as science
of society.”
13. Henry Fairchild defines sociology as “the study of man and his human environment in their
relations to each other”.
14. Prof. Giddings calls human adequacy (human welfare). He also pointed out “sociology tells us
how to become what we want to be”.
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGY
-be able to discuss factors that led to development of sociology
-analyze the factors that influenced the development of sociology.
One must note that no one factor can adequately explain the rise of sociology as a subject. It was
a combination of cultural, economic and political changes that led to the development of
sociology as a discipline.
,1. The enlightenment period.
Perhaps it was the most significant and direct influence on the emergence of the discipline of
sociology is that of the intellectual revolution referred to as the enlightenment. This was
established by a loosely connected collection of philosophers, economists, scientists and other
thinkers who introduced new ideas and criticized existing approaches to all of existence.
Central to their thinking was a focus on empiricism and rationality. Like the political
revolutionaries the intellectuals of the enlightenment advocated a radical break with the past.
Until this time the tendency had been to look to the past for answers to the problems of the day
usually in ancient religious or philosophical texts. Enlightenment thinkers such
as Voltaire and Adam Smith showed how we can look at the world for ourselves and understand
it. Most crucial of all they demonstrated that we can build a better society based on that
understanding.
It is the novelty of the situation people faced in the 18th and 19th centuries which gave birth to
sociology. People saw the potential for a new and better society brought about through science,
rationality and mass societies but they also saw the possibility (and reality) of a much worse
society of poverty and degradation also enabled by these same changes. The early sociologists
tackled both the positive and the negative in the new age of modernity and forever changed
helped us to get a better understanding of how these changes had come about and what we
should do in response to them.
2. POLITICAL REVOLUTION (FRENCH REVOLUTION)
The French revolution in 1789 which carried over through the 19th century was the most
immediate factor in the rise of sociological theorizing. The impact of these revolutions on much
society was enormous and many positive changes resulted. However, what attracted the
attentions of many early theorists was not the positive consequences but the negative effects of
such changes, These writers were particularly disturbed especially in France. They were united
in a desire to restore order to society. Some extreme thinkers and sophisticated thinkers wanted
to return to the peaceful and relatively orderly days of the middle ages and recognized that social
change had made such a return impossible. Thus they sought instead to find new bases of order
in societies that had been overturned by the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries.
This interest in the issue of social order was one of the major concerns of classical sociological
theories especially Comte, Durkheim and Parsons.
3.THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND THE RISE OF CAPITALISM
The industrial revolution mainly happened in the nineteenth centuries. The industrial revolution
was not a single event but many interrelated developments that culminated in the transformation
of the western world from a largely agricultural to an overwhelmingly industrial system. Due to
industrial revolution large number of people left the farms and agricultural land and work for the
industrial occupations offered in the burgeoning factories. The factories themselves were
transformed by a long series of technological improvements. Large economic bureaucracies
arose to provide the many services needed by industry and emerging capitalist economic system.
, In this economy, the ideal was a free marketplace where the many products of an industrial
system could be exchanged within this system, a few profited greatly while the majority worked
long hours for low wages. A reaction against the industrial system and capitalism in general
followed and led to the labour movement as well as to various radical movements aimed at
overthrowing the capitalist system. The industrial revolution, capitalism and reaction against
them all involved an enormous upheaval in western society, as upheaval that affected
sociologists greatly. Four major figures in the early history of sociological theory Karl Marx,
Max Weber, Emile Durkheim and George Simmel were preoccupied with the effects of
industrial revolution.
4. THE RISE OF SOCIALISM
One set of changes aimed at coping with the excesses of the industrial system and capitalism can
be combined under the heading "Socialism". Although some sociologists favored socialism as a
solution to industrial problems, most were personally and intellectually opposed to it. On one
side, Karl Marx was an active supporter of the overthrown of the capitalist system and its
replacement by a socialist system. Marx did not develop a theory of socialism but he spent a
great deal of time criticizing various aspects of capitalist society. In addition, he engaged in a
variety of political activities that he hoped would help bring about the rise of socialist societies.
Max Weber and Emile Durkheim were opposed to socialism- although they recognized the
problems within capitalist society, They sought social reform within capitalism rather than the
social revolution argued for by Marx. They feared socialism more than they did capitalism. This
fear played a greater role in shaping sociological theory than did Marx's support of the socialist
alternative to capitalism.
5. FEMINISM
In one sense there has always been a feminist perspective, wherever women are subordinated and
they have been subordinated almost always and everywhere- they seem to have recognized and
protested that situation in some form. While precursors can be traced to the 1630's high points of
feminist activity and writing occurred in the liberationist movements of modern western history-
a first flurry of productivity in the 1780's and 1790's with the debates surrounding the American
and French revolutions- a far more organised, focused effort in the 1850's as part of the
mobilization against for women's suffrage (rights to vote in election) and for industrial and civic
reform legislation in the progressive Era in the united states. All of this had an impact on the
development of sociology, in particular on the work of a number of women in or associated with
the field. Feminist concerns filtered into sociology only on the margins, in the work of marginal
male theorists or of the increasingly marginalized female theorists- The men who assumed
centrality (Critical role position in middle) in the profession from Spencer, through Weber and
Durkheim made basically conservative responses to the feminist arguments going on around
them, making issues of gender on inconsequential topic to which they responded conventionally
rather than critically in what they identified and publicly promoted as sociology. They responded
in this way even as women were writing a significant body of sociological theory. The history of
this gender politics in the profession, which is also part of the history of male response to
feminist claims, is only now being written.
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