CHAPTER 1

1.It is interesting that social anthropology was given the nomenclature Comparative Sociology by British scholars.

2.In 1994, the Fundaçâo Calouste Gulbenkian set up a Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences. Its Report was published by the Stanford University Press in 1996. Known as the Gulbenkian Commission Report, this book has been translated into several languages. Its Indian edition was published by Vistaar, New Delhi, in 1996.

3. There are two basic approaches—nomothetic and idiographic. Nomothetic refers to ‘generalizing’and idiographic to ‘describing’. The former is thus oriented to theory building and the latter to empirical investigation.

4.John Beattie wrote a textbook on cultural anthropology in 1964, titled Other Cultures; it was published by Free Press, New York. Cultural or social anthropology uses the methods, concepts, and data of archaeology, ethnography, folklore, linguistics, and related fields in its descriptions and analyses of diverse peoples of the world. Its field of research was, until the mid-twentieth century, largely restricted to small-scale (or ‘primitive’), non-Western societies. Today, the field extends to all forms of human association, from village communities to corporate cultures to urban gangs.

5.He, in fact, proposed this as a special branch of biology.

6.We shall explain these concepts later. The reader is expected to take note of the diversity of approaches in earlier periods of the development of sociology.

7.His full name was [Isidore] Auguste Marie François-Xavier Comte.

8.Comte studied mathematics at the Ecole Polytehnic and was regarded as a brilliant student. At the young age of 15 he gave tuitions in geometry and algebra.

9.In later editions of the book, he co-opted Charles H. Page as co-author.

10.It would not be wrong to say that the first students of sociology in India were introduced to this new discipline through MacIver and Page.

11.Published by Harper & Row, New York, in 1928.

12.Published by Harper & Row, New York, in 1966. Sorokin passed away on 20 February 1968.

13.His name at birth was Meyer R. Schkolnick.