CHAPTER 1

What Is Sociology?

While I was struggling to concoct the first attractive lines to begin this inaugural chapter, my computer suddenly stopped functioning. I had to call a techie to fix it.

While repairing the machine, the repairman asked an innocent question: Uncle! What book are you now writing?

‘A book on sociology, on the science of society,’ I replied.

Surprised at my response, he shared his doubts: ‘We all live in society and know what it is. How is a science of society different from common knowledge? Many people have written on society, including our sages and philosophers, like Manu, for example. Similarly, social reformers like Mahatma Gandhi have been writing about the ills of our society. Are they all sociologists?’

His innocent query hinted at the obvious. Since we live in a society, we all feel that we know all about it. Such knowledge is part of common sense. I laboured hard to tell him the difference between impressions and understanding. I said, ‘We all possess a human body and yet we have to go to specialists called anatomists and physiologists who know about the functioning of our organism. It is this knowledge that helps the doctors to treat us when we are ill. Our knowledge is superficial, not scientific. And while we become our own “doctors” for minor ailments, we do need specialists who know better and systematically. Similarly, the science of sociology deals with the anatomy and physiology of society. In this sense, a sociologist is like a social anatomist. He is not like a doctor who cures ailments; but he can become one because of his deeper understanding of the social structures and their functioning.’

He unconvincingly accepted the explanation I offered. For him, science is something abstract and mathematical; it requires laboratory testing, and produces marvels in the form of new technologies. How can there be a science of society without such procedures?

This question is pertinent and cannot be brushed aside. It gives me the necessary stimulus to begin this book. Hopefully, similar queries and doubts on the part of the readers of this book will be answered in the pages that follow.

Introduction

The reservations expressed by the young IT lad reflect, in a way, the general feeling about the credentials of sociology. It is because of such doubts, expressed not only by laymen but also academics, that the subject did not gain entry into the academe until very recently. Even today, the discipline is struggling to gain entry into the curricula in many institutions in Asia.

This book is an invitation into the world of sociology, for the reader to know and understand what it is and what it is not. The reader will be acquainted with the language that sociologists employ, especially commonly used words such as group, family, marriage, caste, class, etc., which are given distinct definitions to standardize their use. The logic of scientific research that governs sociological analysis is followed throughout this book.

In this chapter, we shall attempt to:

1. Define the scope of the subject;
2. Narrate the manner in which scholars from various disciplines felt uncomfortable with the perspectives of their own disciplines and recognized the need to extend their scope of enquiry to cover the social sphere; and
3. Summarize its current stage of development.

Sociology As A Science Of The Social Sphere

The IT lad was right in his observation that much has been written on society by all sorts of people: sages and thinkers, social law givers, social reformers, and political leaders, litterateurs, wanderers and travellers from distant lands. No doubt, all such abundant literature is relevant to our understanding of society, but it cannot be classified as sociology.

Sociology is the science of things social. The first syllable—socio—suggests that it deals with the social or with society. The second syllable—logy—is derived from the Latin root logos, meaning a systematic arrangement or a science. In Hindi and in Sanskrit, it gets translated into shastra, which means an authoritative treatment, as distinct from vigyan, meaning science. In Hindi, samaj shastra is used for sociology, and samaj (or samajik) vigyan for social sciences. Sociology deals with the entire social sphere.

One can say that events occurring within society are social, or that ‘social’ is a broad field that encompasses society as well. In the latter sense, the word social also includes the relationship between societies. Sociology deals with the entire social sphere.

Socology is much younger than the other social sciences. Those regarded as its ‘founding fathers’ were born in Europe between 1798 (Auguste Comte) and 1885 (Ferdinand Tönnies). They came from different academic backgrounds. Both sociology and social anthropology are, thus, products of nineteenth-century Europe.

The industrial revolution that occurred in Europe in the eighteenth century expanded awareness amongst Europeans about their own past, leading to discoveries of Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Near Eastern antiquities. It facilitated the colonization of non-European populations in Asia and Africa, exposing the Europeans to a wide variety of human cultures with their exotic, primitive, and somewhat unique customs and practices, all of which challenged existing narrow conceptions about human civilization. It alerted people that western civilization is not a synonym of human civilization. They are two different concepts mankind lives in a variety of civilizations.

Similarly, industrialization and urbanization in Europe, consequences of the industrial revolution, caused a disruption in their existing traditional social structures. The changing social relationships in Europe attracted the attention of social thinkers and philosophers towards reforms and reorganization.

Both these concerns were ideologically charged, and they impacted research. Increasing awareness about the past and discoveries of primitive societies in far-off lands opened out avenues for those interested in the biological history of humanity and in the historical relationship among different societies. Those interested in the primitive, or less advanced, cultures were eager to establish their superiority through comparison, and those interested in the improvement of their own societies began developing new blueprints. It also created two district specialties: those who went to study ‘other’ societies and cultures were called ethnographers and ethnologists¹ (later social anthropologists), and those who studied and wrote about their own societies within the framework of social reform and with an ideological tinge became the forerunners of sociology.

Prior to the birth of sociology, considerable literature was generated on various aspects of human society and on different societies by thinkers and writers, as well as by social reformers from all intellectual traditions. They had written about the past of their societies, or about the ills of their current social situations. However, they did not deliberately work towards developing a science of society. In their writings, one can find many insights and some useful descriptions of prevailing social institutions and practices, or even prescriptions and proscriptions for good human behaviour, all very helpful inputs for understanding some aspects of society. But they do not add up to a meaningful compendium of theoretical insights needed for the comprehension of the social sphere. That is why it is important to make a distinction between what is sociologically relevant and what is sociology proper. Sociologically relevant literature provides the raw data for sociological analysis and generalization. Indian sociologists, for example, have worked on sacred scriptures, and on the writings of intellectual leaders and social reformers such as Mahatma Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave, and B. R. Ambedkar. But the scriptures are neither sociological, nor are the social reformers qualified to be sociologists. However, both are sociologically relavant.

It is the ‘social’ that is the subject matter of sociology. Humans are described as ‘gregarious’, meaning companionable, looking for company, and somewhat extroverted, rather than withdrawn. Interactions with other persons create the domain of the ‘social’. The permanent character of interactions with the same set of individuals for some specific purpose, or a diffused array of purposes, results in the formation of groups that have their lives longer than the lives of its members. It is the larger group, a group of groups, which forms a society. The interactions (i) between two or more individuals, (ii) between an individual and a group, and (iii) between various groups thus draw the contours of the social.

Social phenomena are as old as humans. Through interactions, humans have created a variety of relationship structures, developed a multitude of practices, nurtured beliefs, and evolved different knowledge systems to guide the life of an individual from the ‘cradle to the grave’. The nature of the social phenomena is so very complex that its science—proper understanding—is still in the process of evolving. In many ways it is still a nascent science.

Sociology can justify its claim to be a science of society when its concepts and theories are applicable not only to the societies of Europe or the developed world, but to all societies of the world, primitive or modern, European or non-European, historical or contemporary, and small or complex. However, the initial theories (whether they can be called theories is a different issue) that came from Europe were based on the limited experience of European societies, and thus were parochial in nature. They were, however, circulated as universal and accepted for long rather uncritically. As the science of sociology spread to other regions of the world and research was carried out in strange settings, their limitations came to the fore. In the 1980s, this led to a demand for the indigenization of social sciences, not for adding more parochial theories drawn from the non-West, but for developing theories that are universally applicable (see Atal, 1981: 189–97).

Intellectual Foundations Of Social Sciences

Sociology and social anthropology form part of the social sciences, which all grew in the nineteenth century. But compared to other disciplines included in the category of social sciences, these were late to arrive on the scene. The story of the birth and growth of social sciences is nicely summed up in the Report of the Gulbenkian Commission, chaired by Immanuel Wallerstein. The Commission’s Report is entitled Open the Social Sciences.² The first part of this report shows how ‘social science was historically constructed as a form of knowledge and why it was divided into a specific set of relatively standard disciplines’.

The Gulbenkian Commission Report suggests that the nineteenth century was marked by the ‘disciplinarization and professionalization of knowledge, that is to say, by the creation of permanent institutional structures designed both to produce new knowledge and to reproduce the producers of knowledge’ (p. 7).

… creation of the multiple disciplines of social science was part of the general nineteenth-century attempt to secure and advance ‘objective’ knowledge about ‘reality’ on the basis of empirical findings (as opposed to ‘speculation’). The intent was to ‘learn’ the truth, not invent or intuit it (p. 13).

There were five main locales for five disciplines included in the social science category. They were: Great Britain, France, Germanies, the Italies, and the United States; and the subjects were history, economics, sociology, political science, and anthropology.

In order to achieve autonomous institutional existence, history moved from mere hagiography. Rather than justifying kings and their regimes, historians engaged in ‘justifying “nations” and often their new sovereigns, the “peoples”’ (Gulbenkian Commission Report, 1996: 16). History’s new emphasis was on wie es eigentlich gewsen ist—what really happened?

The discipline of economics also began in the nineteenth century ‘sometimes within the faculty of law, but often within the faculty … of philosophy’ (ibid. 17). At that time it was called political economy. The adjective ‘political’ prefixed to this branch of knowledge was dropped in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Its practitioners argued that ‘economic behaviour was the reflection of a universal individualist psychology rather than of socially constructed institutions’ (ibid.). This made the study of economics present-oriented; economic history was given a back seat.

Political science emerged later as it succeeded in breaking its ties with law and political philosophy. Its emergence also ‘legitimated economics as a separate discipline’. This subject continued to be taught in many universities as ‘government’ or ‘politics’. After its renaming as political science, this is the only subject that carries the word ‘science’ as a suffix. But it is only recently that it started conducting empirical research and using scientific tools.

‘At the same time that economics was becoming an established discipline in the universities—present oriented and nomothetic³—a totally new discipline was being invented, with an invented name: sociology’ (ibid. 18–19). However, sociology as a discipline developed:

principally out of the institutionalization and transformation within the universities of the work of social reform associations, whose agenda had been primarily that of dealing with the discontents and disorders of the much-enlarged urban working-class populations …. Partly in order to consummate the break with its origins in social reform organizations, sociologists began to cultivate a positivist thrust, which, combined with their orientation toward the present, pushed them as well into the nomothetic camp (ibid.: 19).

The Report interestingly observes that the:

… quartet of history, economics, sociology, and political science, as they became university disciplines in the nineteenth century (and indeed right up to 1945), not only were practiced primarily in the five countries of their collective origin but were largely concerned with describing social reality in the same five countries.

The European encounter with countries of the third world broadened the horizons of the social sciences through inclusion of the study of different cultures and social structures. The discipline of anthropology distinguished itself from the original quartet by focusing on the study of other cultures and societies.

Three other fields—geography, psychology, and law—did not succeed in becoming principal components of the social sciences in the West. In fact, in the twentieth century, history and anthropology were also marginalized, and ‘the state-centric trinity of sociology, economics, and political science consolidated their positions as the core (nomothetic) social sciences’ (ibid. 30).

The Beginnings Of Sociology And Anthropology

The twin disciplines of sociology and social anthropology arose out of ideological concerns—support for colonization, and reorientation of western society in the face of industrialization. Colonization demanded a justification of the superiority of the colonizer over the colonized, and industrialization demanded a new equation between the owners and the labouring class.

With shipping, and later aviation, people from the developed countries began visiting distant lands in search of raw materials, markets, and samples of exotic flora and fauna. Merchants, explorers, and religious missionaries undertook these voyages. The exotic and vastly different cultures of non-western countries attracted the scholarly community as well, both for academic research and for providing assistance to the colonial government. The study of primitive societies became a specialization by itself. The discipline of anthropology thus took birth, and was described as the study of the ‘primitive’ and the ‘past’. Colonization created a necessity for understanding the cultures of colonized societies. Similarly, students of society were also called upon to study the problems caused by changing social structures in the wake of industrialization in the countries of Europe. The ideological battle between Marxists and non-Marxists also influenced sociological research.

Thus, two sets of students of society were created—those who studied their own society, and those who studied the societies of others. It is this feature that led to the distinction between sociology and anthropology. Sociology came to be defined as the study of one’s ‘own’ society, by implication Western society, and anthropology the study of ‘other cultures’.⁴

It will be helpful to elaborate the factors that shaped the discipline of anthropology. Since it grew as the study of the tribes that inhabited the colonies, anthropology was dubbed as a ‘colonial’ discipline, decried by many as a tool in the hands of the colonialists.

In order to rule alien societies, the colonizers needed knowledge of the cultures of the ruled. The administrators sent out to rule these colonies were encouraged to study these native cultures and maintain diaries of their observations. These diaries provided useful inputs in training successive waves of administrators. Universities also began sending scholars to study the native cultures, as well as the flora and fauna of the alien lands. Thus, both students of man and of natural history were drawn to these non-western settings.

The cultures of these societies were very different. The people belonged to different races, spoke different languages, wore exotic dresses, practised different customs, and had divergent orientations towards the supernatural, which appeared more magical than religious. There was a need to understand these cultures in order to better manage and administer them.

Students of natural history and anthropology welcomed the opportunity to carry out investigations of their subject matter in strange settings to further exemplify the theory of evolution as developed by Charles Darwin in his Origin of Species. Anthropologists found the key concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest used by Darwin to explicate his theory of evolution useful, and they tried to build an evolutionary ladder for human societies by putting the savages at the bottom, barbarians in the middle, and civilized peoples at the top. Colonial administrators used this framework to justify their superiority and the legitimacy of their rule over the colonies.

One of the followers of Darwin, Francis Galton, saw merit in the process of natural selection and developed ideas about the power of hereditary influence, virtually ignoring the existence of cultural processes. He invented the concept⁵ of Eugenics, leading to generalizations regarding racial superiority. This was a heavily racist approach.

When Darwin’s theory of evolution was published, there was little understanding about human cultures as a socially inherited way of life. Those studying human society were guided by biological determinism, and later by geographical determinism. Human behaviour was regarded as a product of one’s biology and the geographical environment. This was opposed by those anthropologists who saw culture as a system that influences human behaviour. It gave rise to the debate on nature versus nurture. In earlier sociology textbook discussions, heredity and environment figured quite prominently; environment was narrowly defined as geographical or natural surroundings, or broadly as inclusive of both natural and cultural settings.

Scholars working to develop a general theory of evolution focused on human society, or human civilization as a whole to distinguish it from lower-level animals, and attempted generalizations about the origin of society and its evolution. Included in this category are students of history and ethnology. The ethnologists were different from ethnographers. The latter took to describing the ‘actually existing structures of societies’ considered to be primitive, representing, in a sense, the earlier ladders of the currently advanced societies of the West.

Those investigating non-western societies of the primitive world also developed a scientific protocol for research and reporting. Notes and Queries in Anthropology, for example, can be regarded as a book on social science methodology that dwells on what to seek and what to observe. The technique of ‘participant observation’ was developed to study people who were preliterate and incapable of communicating with foreign observers. British anthropologists A. R. Radcliffe-Brown and Bronislaw Malinowski took the lead, not only in the investigation of tribal societies but also in developing a structural–functional framework for the presentation and explanation of field data. Due to its origin and orientation towards the societies of the colonies, anthropology was seen as a discipline aiding the colonial administration.

Just as pioneering anthropologists came from the biological sciences, the originators of sociology were mostly academic outsiders, coming from diverse backgrounds such as physics and mathematics, law, philosophy, history, and engineering. All were led towards social thinking because of their concern with deteriorating social conditions caused by World War I, or by the processes of industrialization and urbanization. While early anthropologists were drawn into investigations of the past and primitive forms of human society, pioneering sociologists were concerned with their immediate present and with shaping the future in accordance with their ideology of a desirable society. Marx took recourse to history and proposed his theory of dialectical materialism. Those disagreeing with his formulation developed a structural–functional approach for the study of society.⁶

Anthropology developed a holistic framework, understanding society as a complex, interactive whole. The discipline also propagated cultural relativism, implying an appreciation of cultural phenomena within their own context, rather than evaluating them as good or bad according to the values of the researcher’s own culture. Studies of these small societies covered all aspects—social structure, law, politics, religion, magic, art, and technology. Sociology attempted to cover all these areas while studying larger societies. Of necessity, it had to develop a methodology that suited the study of large populations, and a complex web of social relationships.

However, the key goal of both disciplines remained the same—studying the social sphere. The size of the society, or the type of methodology employed, should not separate these intellectual efforts. No definition of society, or of any of its components, can be scientific if it cannot be universally applied. Therefore, while the two disciplines might have originated because of different stimuli, their ultimate aim unites them. That is why the distinction between them is regarded as superficial, and is increasingly being discarded.

The Contribution Of Pioneers

Those who laid the foundations of sociology crossed the frontiers of their disciplines to make forays into the hitherto unexplored territory that came to be called sociology. Entering this terrain from different vantage points, they created their own road maps and pathways. In technical terms, these are called ‘approaches’. Whenever a new discipline is founded, different pioneers adopt different approaches to move into the new territory. It paves the way for a later period of consolidation to ensure the systematization of an already developed knowledge base. Words with definitive meanings become concepts. Possible explanations for the occurrence of events—called hypotheses—are offered and then examined by others in other settings. Upon their validation by empirical data, they become theories and remain so until future research challenges that formulation and creates a need for a re-examination of existing theory. It is this process that is called the institutionalization and professionalization of the discipline.

The new discipline of sociology had the advantage of riding on the shoulders of older sciences—both natural and social—to develop its own paradigms and theories. The reigning idiom of evolutionism and the political ideology of Marxism influenced the beginnings of sociology. Evolutionism, developing in the biological sciences, provided the impetus to build models of society similar to the models for organic systems, and also to pay attention to the growth of societies. The industrial revolution also helped to create better transportation systems within the countries and facilitated long sea voyages to far-off lands. The new industrial economies of the West were in need of raw material for their industries and markets for their finished products.

Let us now turn to the forerunners of the disciplines of sociology and social anthropology.

We begin with the French scholar Auguste Comte⁷ (1798–1857). Comte is credited with giving the discipline its name somewhere in the 1840s. He did not like the term social physics, used by Belgian statistician Adolph Quetlet (1796–1874). Comte attributed the late birth of the discipline to the fact that social phenomena are far more complex compared to other natural phenomena. Their study had to wait till the tools had been perfected to investigate simpler phenomena. He argued that since the latter were the first to be taken up for scientific studies, they had a long period in which to develop complex—well-developed—science regarding such subject matters. And the complex phenomena—such as the social phenomena—were taken up for study much later. They are still being studied with simpler tools.

Building on this argument, Comte developed a hierarchy of sciences, in which he placed social sciences nearer the top as they were relatively new, keeping in mind the complex character of their subject matter. Highly developed sciences relative to simpler phenomena were placed in the earlier stages.

This is how Comte’s hierarchy of the sciences is presented in chronological order—the older disciplines at the lower end and newly emerging sciences—called nascent sciences—at the top (see Table 1.1).

Table 1.1  Comte’s Hierarchy of Sciences

Complex Phenomenon	Science of Morals	Nascent Science
	Sociology
	Biology
	Chemistry
	Physics
	Astronomy
Least Complex Phenomenon	Mathematics	Highly Developed Science

It must be stressed that the purpose of Comte’s hierarchy was not to establish the superiority of sociology over other subjects, but only to indicate how recent it was. It should be regarded as an admission of the fact that those studying social phenomena are engaged in handling a complex subject, and that it could not have emerged as a special field of study until the ground was prepared by other sciences dealing with phenomena far removed from human activity. He also acknowledged that new fields are built on the foundations of the old. Old and established disciplines provide a theoretical repertoire and methodology that help to build new edifices of knowledge. It is also interesting to note that Comte did not mention other social science subjects such as economics, political science, psychology, etc. These are all subsumed under the umbrella concept of sociology. Used in this broader sense, sociology, for Comte, was the other name for social sciences.

Auguste Comte (1798–1857)

Comte advocated Positivism. It was a philosophical system of thought which maintained that the goal of knowledge is simply to describe the phenomenon, not to question whether it exists or not. He thus made a case for the use of the methodology of science—based on observation and experimentation—in social science research. He firmly believed that the logic of inquiry should be the same in both the physical and social sciences.

Comte believed in scientific determinism and in objective observation—empiricism—rather than in subjective or interpretative understanding. In other words, he suggested that sociological studies should be based on the actual observation of social reality, and not on speculation and personal understanding of the occurrence. ‘Never take explanations for granted,’ was his message. However, he did not promote the use of mathematics and probability theories, although he was trained in the mathematical sciences.⁸ That was the reason why he did not accept the term ‘social physics’ for the science of society suggested by Quetlet. It is interesting that while Comte had studied mathematics at the university, he did not recommend its extension into the social field. Comte firmly believed that the progress of mankind towards a superior civilization could be achieved through the science of sociology.

Comte introduced positivism to move the study of the ‘social phenomena’ away from the realm of religion. His followers, though, transformed positivism itself into a religion.

The other prominent name from France is that of Emile Durkheim (1858–1917). Durkheim was born a year after the death of Comte. He was the son of a Jewish Rabbi, but chose to stay away from the family profession. He was regarded as an agnostic. While Comte went to l’ École Polytechnique where he studied mathematics and the physical sciences, Durkheim joined l’ École Normale Supérieure to study history and philosophy. He, however, read the writings of Comte and Herbert Spencer, and did his doctoral dissertation on Division of Labour in Society—a book published in various languages and still treated as a classic.

Durkheim began his career as a high school teacher in philosophy. In 1887, he moved to the University of Bordeaux to develop education courses for secondary school teachers. It was there that he introduced a course in sociology and held the Chair of the Depament of Social Sciences. In 1902, he moved to Sorbonne University in Paris as Professor of Education, and in 1913 he succeeded in getting the Chair renamed as the Chair of Education and Sociology.

It is, however, interesting to note that Durkheim did not use the term sociology; instead, he preferred to use science sociale—social science—for the new discipline. The subjects he taught under this term included law, religion, and socialism. Besides, he lectured on crime, incest taboos, totemism, kinship and suicide.

Emile Durkheim (1858–1917)

Durkheim’s other major work is Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Research for this book took him to the world of the primitive tribes. Although he did not carry out any ethnographic research on a tribe himself, he used material produced on the various primitive tribes by anthropologists and other students of religion.

Durkheim’s other work on Suicide is a precursor to the use of statistics and remains a classic in terms of the explanations offered after a thorough analysis of the available data.

While writing on substantive topics, Durkheim also paid attention to the methodology of social science research. The Rules of Sociological Method can be regarded as the very first book on social science methodology.

Another pioneering sociologist from Great Britain and a contemporary of Comte, Herbert Spencer, learnt chemistry, mathematics, mechanics, and physics, and showed no interest in the humanities while at school. He began his career as a civil engineer in the railways. At the age of 28, he left the job and moved to London to engage himself with writing, and came out with his first book on Social Statics in 1850.

Working for 37 years from 1860 through 1897, Spencer produced a series of volumes on Synthetic Philosophy; three volumes in this series were devoted to The Principles of Sociology (published in 1876, 1885 and 1897). Prior to this, he had published two volumes on The Principles of Psychology (1864, 1867), an expansion of his previous work published in 1855. He conceptualized sociology as a study of social organisms, and in doing so he identified parallels and differentials between biological and social organisms.

Herbert Spencer(1820–1903)

In Germany, it was Georg Simmel (1858–1918) who pioneered sociology. Unlike Comte and Spencer, Simmel studied history, philosophy, and psychology. Although his appointment as Professor of Sociology came much later and was opposed by several academics in his country, his was the first book that carried the title ‘sociology’. The full title is Soziologie: Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergellschaftung (Sociology: Investigations of Forms of Sociation). He was a co-founder, with Weber and Toennies, of the German Society for Sociology.

Georgy Simmel (1858–1918)

Another well-known name in the field of sociology from Germany is that of Max Weber (1864–1920). He became a Professor of Economics at Freiberg University at the age of 30. Two years later, Weber moved to Heidelberg as Professor of Political Science. Along with teaching economics and political science, Weber began editing a journal named Archives for Social Science and Social Policy, which included papers in political science, philosophy of law, social ethics, social psychology, and sociology. In 1903, he began working on the book that is now regarded as a classic, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, and this took him to the United States to personally observe the functioning of a capitalist society. He still remained ambivalent regarding an independent status for sociology, but in 1910 he joined hands with Simmel and Ferdinand Tönnies to set up the German Sociological Society. Weber brought the social sciences in Germany into direct critical confrontation with Karl Marx and Nietzsche, the intellectual giants of nineteenth-century European thought. This confrontation helped him create a distinct methodology for the social sciences, and produce scientific works dealing with the sociology of religion, social stratification, political sociology, small group behaviour, and the philosophy of history.

Max Weber(1864–1920)

We may also add here the name of another German pioneer, Ferdinand Tönnies (1855–1936). Born into a wealthy farmer’s family in Nordfriesland in Schleswig-Holstein, he studied at the universities of Jena, Bonn, Leipzig, Berlin, and Tübingen. He received a doctorate in 1877 for his thesis on the Ancient Siwa Oasis. Four years later, he became a private lecturer at the University of Kiel. The conservative Prussian government considered him a social democrat and did not give him full professorship until 1913; however, he left the university in 1916. He returned to the university as a professor emeritus in 1921 and taught until 1933, when the Nazis, enraged by his earlier publications that criticized them, ousted him.

Ferdinand Tönnies(1855–1936)

Tönnies is regarded as the first German sociologist who published over 900 works and contributed to many areas of sociology and philosophy. He is most often quoted for the distinction he made between community and society— Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887). He also coined the term Voluntarism. Tönnies made contributions to the study of social change, particularly public opinion, customs and technology, crime, and suicide. He was also interested in methodology, especially statistics.

While talking of Germany, one cannot escape mentioning the name of Karl Marx (1818–83), who made a profound impact on all social science thinking. Although he never called himself a sociologist, his work in the field of economics and social history had great relevance to sociological thought. His thought took the form of an ‘ism’ and its ardent followers call themselves ‘Marxists’—a term that is used not only by professionals in the field of economics, history, political science, or sociology, but also by those engaged in politics of socialism and communism. He learnt Latin and German at school, and jurisprudence and philosophy at the university. His radical articles against the Prussian government’s treatment of peasants closed all doors to the academia and earned him an exile in Paris, where he worked on economic and philosophic manuscripts; however, he was also expelled from Paris and took refuge in Brussels, Belgium. But his political activities, which included drafting a Communist Manifesto (1848), resulted in his ouster from Belgium. He then migrated to London, where he lived from 1850 till his death in 1883. During his London years, he became interested in political economy. In fact, he is among the very first to use a ‘questionnaire’ to learn the situation of the labour class. For long years, he and his intellectual partner Friedrich Engels (1820–95) worked on the magnum opus Capital, which was published in three volumes. However, only the first volume of this mammoth publication came out in 1867; the other two volumes were published in co-authorship with Engels posthumously in 1885 and 1894, respectively. Marx died in 1883 and Engels in 1895, one year after the publication of the third volume. Engels believed that Marx’s economic theories provide a sound basis for socialism.

Karl Max(1818–1883)

(Source: © Nicku.Shutterstock)

These radical ideas were politicized and gave birth to socialism and communism. As ‘isms’, Marxist ideology had its followers and detractors. They fought their battles academically, drawing material from history to prove their point or challenge their rivals. This is best seen in the writings of Marx and Weber. The opposition in their viewpoints is best expressed by the first letters of their last names—W in Weber is the reverse of the M in Marx! Marx’s emphasis on the mode of production led him to suggest that the structure of society is built on economic foundations. To challenge this, Weber studied the protestant ethic and calvinism to trace the spirit of capitalism, arguing that it is not the economy but religion on the foundation of which other structures of society are built. It is to signify the key role of religion that Weber’s intellectual journey brought him in contact with Hindu religion. This intellectual battle sowed the seeds of empirical research to test the several theses offered by the competing ideologies.

Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923)was born in Paris, although he was of Italian parentage. In 1861, when Italy became one nation, his uncle was chosen as the first president of the Italian senate. For political reasons, his father remained in exile in France and returned to Italy when Vilfredo was 16 years old. Vilfredo joined a polytechnic institute in Turin to get a degree in physics and mathematics, and then moved to another institution for a degree in engineering. This qualified him to be an engineer in a railroad company. Frustrated with his work, he joined politics and failed to win an election. Quite contemptuously, he wrote: ‘To live in this country, one must either be a thief or a friend of thieves.’

Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923)

Coming from an aristocratic background and having inherited a large fortune from his uncle, Pareto retreated to the world of knowledge. He studied economics extensively and wrote critical articles on the economic policies of the government. In 1893, he became a Professor of Political Economy at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. His writings on the equilibrium model of supply and demand and on the income distribution curve earned him the accolade of being the ‘father of mathematical economics’. Although he never called himself a sociologist, he engaged himself in sociological thinking since 1909, and came out with a book titled Treatise of General Sociology (Trattao di sociologia generale) in 1916. A favourite of the fascists, Pareto decried socialism but admired Karl Marx, whom he regarded as a poor economist but a good sociologist. As a trained engineer and specialist in thermodynamics, Pareto was an empiricist and advocated the use of methods of natural science in testing sociological theories. Talcott Parsons—whose work on Social Action has greatly influenced all social sciences—has included Pareto among one of the four key contributors to the theory of social action. His ideas regarding the circulation of elites, residues, and derivatives, and on productivity have percolated not only in sociology, but also in the science of management.

Emphasizing the fact that the pioneers in sociology were all outsiders, Ashley and Orenstein wrote:

In varying ways, Marx, Pareto, Simmel, Veblen, Durkheim, Weber, and Comte were all … outsiders. Marx was the exile in Paris and London; Simmel, the secularized Jew blocked from university advancement; Pareto, the aristocratic recluse; Veblen, the foreigner in his own land; Durkheim, the provincial rabbi’s son in Paris; Weber,the nationalist whose political ambitions were thwarted; and Comte, the disavowed high priest of the ‘religion of humanity’ (2005: 387).

Formalization Of The Discipline

Any new discipline is a product of a multitude of interactions between different disciplines, covering the various fields of the physical sciences, biological sciences, arts and humanities, and other social sciences. The interdisciplinarity of such attempts produces a new discipline. Thus, any new speciality should be regarded as a hybrid progeny. Its entry into the academia in different countries follows different routes. Depending on its promoter, it may be introduced as a special course in a preexisting programme and, in due course of time, it may establish its credentials as an independent discipline. We have seen that in Germany, it gained entry via economics or political economy, and in France, Durkheim brought it into the academia via education.

Although sociology’s origins are to be found in Europe, its systematization and formalization occurred in the United States. The three American sociologists that pioneered teaching of sociology in the United States were Robert M. Maclver, Pitirim A. Sorokin, and Talcott Parsons.

Robert M. MacIver (1882–1970)

The textbook that is regarded as a landmark, and is used even today as a reference, was inked by Robert Morrison MacIver,⁹ Professor of Political Science at Columbia University (New York). It came out in 1931 under the title Society: Its Structure and Changes.¹⁰ MacIver also did a textbook in political science with the title The Web of Government (1947).

It is important to mention that Robert M. MacIver (1882–1970)—born in Scotland and educated in Edinburgh—took his degrees in classics. He began his teaching career in political science in 1907 and started teaching sociology at Aberdeen University in 1911. In 1927, he became the Head of the Department of Economics and Sociology at Barnard College, and in 1929, he joined Columbia University as Lieber Professor of Political Philosophy and Sociology, where he remained until his retirement in 1950. MacIver’s theories tended to be modelled after scholars like Plato, Aristotle, Durkheim, Simmel, and Levy-Bruhl. He rejected the growing notions of professionalism, specialization, quantification, behaviourism, and positivism, instead focused on human agency, methodological diversity, and ethical issues. He sought to define an integrated social science.

At a time when MacIver was writing the textbook for sociology, Pitirim A. Sorokin (1889–1968) was working on his Contemporary Sociological Theories (1928).¹¹ In this book, he covered the main currents in sociological thought of the last 40 years (from the late 1880s till the 1920s). In doing so, he focused on the classification of ideas in terms of theories, rather than describing or reviewing the works of earlier sociologists, as was the practice. Many early books on sociological theory present, to use Sorokin’s attribution, ‘a gallery of individual sociologists’. Instead, he preferred to prepare a ‘guide to orient the reader in the bewildering jungle of general sociologies’. He wrote a second book, a companion to Contemporary Sociological Theories, towards the end of his career—Sociological Theories of Today (1966).¹²

Pitirim A. Sorokin (1889–1968)

This pioneering sociologist was Russian by birth. Born in a remote village in Russia’s Vologda province, this farmer’s son had little education as a child and was employed to paint in churches. Later, he moved to St Petersberg, where he studied at the Psycho-Neurological Institute and then at the University. Since sociology was not yet acknowledged as a discipline, some courses in law, economics, history, and criminology included a sociological orientation. Sorokin had hardly begun his teaching career in Russia when he became involved in revolutionary activities against the Czar, and was imprisoned for several years. During this period of incarceration, he studied the behaviour of the criminals in prison and wrote his first book, Crime and Punishment, Service and Reward. The government first pronounced a death sentence against him, but later brought it down to exile; this brought him, in 1923, to the United States, where he was appointed at the University of Minnesota. Naturalized as a US citizen in 1930, Sorokin moved to Harvard University, where he founded the department of sociology and worked there until 1955.

Talcott Parsons (1902–79), whose works influenced theoretical perspective not only in sociology but in all the social sciences, was his colleague. Robert Merton, another major theoretician of America, was a product of this department. These three personalities played an important role in formalizing sociology, and influencing later generations of sociologists the world over.

Talcott Parsons (1902–79)

Parsons, like his predecessors, entered sociology from a different academic background. He was originally trained in biology and economics, and was exposed to the works of Harold Laski, R. H. Tawney, Bronislaw Malinowski, and Hobhouse. He then went to the University of Heidelberg in Germany to do his Ph.D. in economics and sociology. With such an interdisciplinary orientation, Parsons came out with his Structure of Social Action in 1937, leading to his other works that influenced social sciences worldwide. Oriented more towards theory, Parsons engaged himself, along with his collaborators from the fields of anthropology and psychology, to develop a general theory of the social system. He employed his Action Frame of Reference in the area of medical sociology, in fact, developed the ‘sociology of sickness’, and engaged in the analysis of small group dynamics.

Robert K. Merton (1910–2003)

A student and later collaborator of Talcott Parsons, Robert K. Merton¹³ (1910–2003) had a degree in sociology. When Merton launched his career as a sociologist in the 1940s, the field was still earning credibility. ‘He established the sociology of science, and indeed, sociology itself as a legitimate and major scientific discipline,’ said Gardner Lindzey, a psychologist and former Director of the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, which Merton helped to found, along with Paul Lazarsfeld. He wrote his doctoral thesis on Science and Technology in Nineteenth Century England. As the title of the work suggests, this was based on library research. Despite being influenced by Parsons, Merton talked of the ‘Theories of the Middle Range’ as against the ‘General Theory’ of the deductive type propounded by Parsons. He talked of the bearings of theory on empirical research and the bearings of empirical research on theory. Prefacing his book on Social Theory and Social Structure with two essays on ‘bearings’, Merton demonstrated the construction of middle-range theories in this classic work that carries a collection of his seminal essays on theory, which should remain a ‘must read’ for any student of sociology (see Atal, 2006: 115–26).

Struggling to systematize sociology in terms of theory, Merton had this to say about the contributions of the so-called founding fathers:

The clearly visible fact is that the early history of sociology—as represented, for example, in the speculations of a Comte or a Spencer, a Hobhouse or a Ratzenhofer—is very far from cumulative. The conceptions of each seldom build upon the work of those who have gone before. They are typically laid out as alternative and competing conceptions rather than consolidated and extended into a cumulative product. Consequently, little of what these early forerunners wrote remains pertinent to sociology today. Their works testify to the large merits of talented men, but they do not often provide guidelines to the current analysis of sociological problems. They were grand achievements for their day, but that day is not ours. We sociologists of today may be only intellectual pigmies but, unlike the overly-modest Newton, we are not pigmies standing on the shoulders of giants. The accumulative tradition is still so slight that the shoulders of the giants of sociological science do not provide a very solid base on which to stand (Merton, 1957: 5).

What Merton said in 1957 still holds true. There are various schools of thought and varying approaches followed in sociological research and writing. Schools in an intellectual field are like religious sects; those belonging to any such schools treat the writings of the founder almost as dogmas and become fundamentalist in their orientation, disregarding inconvenient facts and data. It is in this sense that people talk of a Marxist sociology or a capitalist sociology. Those interested in developing testable theories and dependable generalizations have offered paradigms as a prelude to theory. As such, it cannot be said that there is ‘a’ sociological approach. We are still living in the midst of paradigmatic battles. Three important paradigms prevalent in current sociology are: the structural–functional paradigm, the social conflict paradigm, and the symbolic interaction paradigm. Since this is not a book on sociological theory, we shall not deal with these paradigms in detail. Keeping our focus on the theories of the middle range, we shall analyse the key concepts and orientations developed around them to facilitate both research and understanding.

Sociology: Moving Towards Becoming A Science

As Merton remarked, the forerunners of sociology offered speculations and competing conceptions of social reality as they observed it, and also offered scenarios of a desirable social order. While knowing their views and appreciating their concerns is significant, we must admit that they cannot be cumulated. They do not offer compatible building blocks for a systematic theory of society.

When we talk of sociology, we are talking of a discipline that deals with some significant aspect of Man—with a capital M, or the Anthropos—a more neutral term applicable both to men and women. The Anthropos lives in an environment that is natural or physical on the one hand, and social and cultural on the other. The Anthropos has a long history of existence on this earth and, therefore, has a past, and is also concerned with the future of the species in the changing environs, mainly through human actions and choices. In this sense, Man is seen by different specialist groups from different vantage points, including the sociological. By placing Man in the middle of his natural and social environment and dividing the concerns into past, present, and future, one can locate the positioning of various disciplines dealing with this complex subject matter, the humans, or the homo sapiens.

As shown in Figure 1.1, both sociology and social anthropology are engaged in dealing with the present; the past and the future are subject matters of other cognate disciplines such as history, ancient history, prehistory, archaeology, and futurology. But as sociology grew as a discipline, these artificial boundaries began to crumble. Just as a new discipline develops through the contributions of scholars working in widely disparate areas, so do occur finer specializations within a discipline. It is through such interactions in an inter-disciplinary framework that the seeds of a new discipline are sown. When sociologists apply the perspective of their discipline to the investigation of a society long since dead, or to a society’s past, they develop ‘historical sociology’ or ‘sociological history’. Similarly, subsystems of a society other than the social have led to the development of ‘economic’ or ‘political sociology’. A similar thing may occur in methodology: ‘mathematical sociology’ is a clear example of this trend. Even the difference between sociology and anthropology is sought to be explained in terms of the methodology followed by the two disciplines, despite their dealing with the same subject matter. People often believe that sociologists use survey research while anthropologists emphasize on observation, both participant and non-participant. However, this is a wrong perception. A technique of data gathering is selected keeping in mind the type of population studied, or the topic of research. A discipline is distinguished from others in terms of its subject matter. Since both sociology and social anthropology study the structure and functioning of human society, they are virtually the same discipline with different nomenclatures and histories of their origin. Anthropology traditionally focused on societies ‘other’ than those of the researcher; anthropologists concentrated on the study of relatively small, less complex, tribal societies characterized as ‘primitive’. Sociology, on the other hand, was developed by those scholars who concentrated on the study of their own society or civilization.

 

Figure 1.1  Academic Disciplines Dealing with Different Aspects of the Environment

This distinction was blurred when modern education spread among countries of the developed world and scholars there began studying their own societies, which were earlier regarded as the province of anthropology. The phenomenon of caste in India, to take one example, was studied both by Indian and western scholars. To regard the work of the latter as anthropology and that of the former as sociology makes no logical sense when the methodology employed by both remains the same.

It may be said that concern with developing a universal science of sociology has brought the two disciplines closer. Theories or generalizations, emanating from the study of advanced societies of the industrializing West were challenged by the studies of other societies, and created a ground for comparative research and for employment of the scientific method.

Since we call sociology a science, we must ask: what do we mean by science?

There is an agreement that science is empirical, objective, and it aims at developing generalizations about a phenomenon with a view to developing powers of prediction relative to that phenomenon.

Let us briefly explain these three characteristics of science.

• Empirical:This word signifies that a scientific pursuit requires the observation of the phenomena, as distinct from philosophical speculation.
• Objective: This characteristic emphasizes on value neutrality, disallowing the value biases of the researcher. Debates still continue in academic circles about the possibility of a value-free social science.
• Theoretical with Powers of Prediction: Theory should be understood as a logically interconnected set of propositions to derive empirical uniformities. This requires the study of a sufficient number of cases of a particular phenomenon in all its diversities, in order to enable a theoretician to cull out both similarities and differences, and build generalizations at different levels—from micro situations to macro situations, and then to a higher level of abstraction. Some scholars begin with developing general schemes of grand theories and invite people to test them in concrete situations. Other scholars begin with empirical studies of small communities or groups, or of chosen sub-systems, and propose the findings as hypotheses to be tested in different settings to pave the way for theory building.

When we employ these criteria to judge the candidature of sociology as a science, qualified by the adjective ‘social’, we may find that it has not yet reached the level of sophistication that other sciences—physical and biological—have achieved. As Merton remarked, earlier speculative thinking about society did not prove to be cumulative. Ideological predispositions similarly go against the criterion of objectivity.

When objectivity is defined as being value-free, it stresses the need for a scientist to accept the ‘values’ of science.

Although the concept of ‘value’ remains debatable, one can still say that any scholar carries with him/her a veritable bag of values. A researcher is socialized (i) in the values of his society; (ii) in his/her own religious persuasion; (iii) in his/her political–ideological values; and (iv) in the values of science. A scientist needs to maintain the distinction between these different values, which may come into conflict at times. S/he has to guard against the intrusion of values from other non-scientific domains.

Let us illustrate this with the profession of an architect. An architect designs buildings to meet the demands of the client. In developing a blueprint for a building, an architect is expected to consider variables such as type of land and soil, direction of winds, strength of materials, availability of resources—both material and financial, labour, skilled manpower; in addition, the architect is also expected to give due regard to the values and preferences of the client. For example, the client may be guided by the principles of ancient Vastushastra, which prescribe the location of gates and windows, kitchen, and bedrooms. The client may belong to a religion other than that of the architect. In such circumstances, a value-free architect is one who includes the values of her/his client into the plan of the proposed building, while refraining from inserting his own value biases. So a Muslim architect can be approached to design a Hindu temple; similarly, a Hindu architect can be quite competent to prepare the blueprint for a mosque. It is a different matter if any one of these architects refuses to build a religious place for practitioners of a religion that is not her/his own. But this refusal cannot be on the ground of the science of architecture. It is in this sense that the science of architecture is value-free.

The same applies to the profession of medicine. The religion of both the medical practitioner and the patient being treated is irrelevant. Religion may play a role in the prescription of diets, but not in the diagnosis of a disease or its treatment.

It is in this sense that one can say that sociology is neither an ideology nor a religion that requires its adherents to follow the dictates of their master. Surely, however, there are sociological analyses of ideologies, and there is a sociology of religion. The point is that you do not have to be Hindu to study the sociology of Hinduism, or a Christian to study Christianity. However, there cannot be a Hindu, or Christian or Muslim sociology. One should be aware of these falsehoods.

A scientific pursuit can be simply described as a journey from Q[uestion] to A[nswer]. The questions that initiate a scientific quest may come from a wide range of sources, and not only from within the discipline. While searching for a scientific answer, one may find several probable answers based on impressions, ideologies, or limited observations. These may serve as ‘hypotheses’ to guide the research process, so that from I[mpressions] we move to a dependable answer based on systematic and objective O[bsevation]. The training in science alerts the researcher to the fact that any plausible answer obtained through sustained observations is tentative; it is valid as long as there is no fresh data that could challenge the existing generalization. It is this humility and respect for facts that distinguishes science from philosophy or idle theorization.

As a developing science, sociology is still far from perfect. When people talk of sociological theory, they may mean either of the following:

• Contributions of individual scholars, particularly the founding fathers of the discipline.
• Discussion of concepts.
• Hypotheses, hunches, systematized assumptions.
• Body of logically interdependent generalized concepts in a systemic frame of reference.
• Ideal types or typologies.
• Models and paradigms such as society as an organism, mechanical vs. organic solidarity, equilibrium, hierarchy or ladder, etc. Similarly, statistical or mathematical models, cybernetic models, game theories, etc.

We quote, with approval, what Francis Abraham has said in his introductory book, Modern Sociological Theory.

Sociologists can—and must—learn to live with diversity. It is not the existence of diverse theories but their abuses that must concern us. The weakness of the discipline lies not in the multiplicity of theories, but rather, in the sociologists’ eagerness to be defensive about them, for it betrays their pious hope for a true theory some day (Abraham, 1982: 18).

Let us conclude this chapter by saying that there is a remarkable change in the orientation of all social sciences, including sociology, in the sense that they are all opting for a multidisciplinary approach. The Gulbenkian Commission identified three developments in the post-1945 era that ‘profoundly affected the structure of the social sciences’. These were: (i) change in the world of political structure; (ii) an expansion in the scale of all human activities (population explosion and expansion of productive capacity); and (iii) quantitative and geographic expansion of the university system everywhere in the world. These factors together brought in new perspectives from which to view social reality. All social science disciplines began to be comparative, change-oriented, and multidisciplinary in terms of theory, and quantitative and mathematical in terms of research, thus sharing a common ground with sister disciplines both in the social and natural sciences.

To be a good sociologist today, it is necessary to be exposed to other social sciences, and unbind oneself from ideological cages.