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TOPICS TO BE COVERED IN SOCIOLOGY ADVANCED LEVEL (6043)

SOCIOLOGY PAPER 1 (Soc P1) SOCIOLOGY PAPER 2 (Soc P2)

1. Introduction: Sociology and its founders. A. Race and Ethnic Groups

2. The scientific nature of Sociology. B. The concept of Unemployment

3. Sociological pespectives. C. Poverty

4. Socialisation
D. Population and Health
5. Family and Households
E. Urbanisation and Industrialisation
6. Culture
F. Mass Media
7. Religion
G. Enterprise and Work
8. Research Methods
H. Leisure
9. Education
I. Globalisation and social change
10. Gender
J. Deviance, crime and social control
11. Age
K. Governance and citizenship

INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY
 Sociology is the study of human behaviour in groups.
 Giddens (2013) defined sociology as a social science concerned with the systematic study
of relationships between individuals within a society.
 August Comte (1798-1857) defined sociology as the scientific study of social dynamics.
 Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) defined sociology as the study of social facts.
 For Max Weber (1864-1920) sociology is the scientific study of human social action {any
action oriented to influence or influenced by another person or persons}.
 Shaefer (1989) states that sociology is the study of society, how it works and how its parts
and components hang together. Thus sociology tries to examine how society or societal
forces influences individual‘s attitude and behaviour.
 Sociologists study the interaction of society and the individual.
 The discipline of sociology helps people to put things in a new and different perspective,
things that appear ordinary suddenly appear strange (Haralambos and Holborn, 2013).
 The study of sociology aims at helping people (learners) to understand life in an open
minded manner- free from any manipulation but good for the whole society which they
belong to hence promoting unhu/ubuntu.

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Background on the development of sociology

 Sociology imaged out of social problems (disorder) that took place in Western Europe in
the 19th century.
 Sociology originated from France where the situation was volatile, exciting and
revolutionary during the 19th century. Thus people wanted answers to long standing
questions and bring in new forms of reasoning in society.
 The 1789 revolution in France drastically changed the French socio-economic landscape
of the society.
 Sociology is a social science found by a French man called August Comte in 1838.
 Thus many classical sociologist such as August Comte (who is regarded as the father of
sociology) and Emily Durkheim came from France.
 Therefore many sociologist were disturbed by the chaos caused by the French revolution,
hence they were united in their desire to restore order to the society.

GENERAL FACTORS THAT CONTRIBUTED TO THE RISE OF

SOCIOLOGY:

1. Industrial Revolution and the rise of Capitalism

At least as important as political revolution in shaping sociological theory was the
Industrial Revolution, which swept through many Western societies, mainly in the
nineteenth and early twentieth 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. Large
numbers of people left farms and agricultural 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 the emerging capitalist economic system. In this
economy, the ideal was a free marketplace where the many products of. The revolution
brought a lot of industrial and business development which affected the society as a
whole.

2. Political Revolutions
The long series of political revolutions that were ushered in by the French Revolution in
1789 and carried over through the nineteenth century was the most immediate factor in
the rise of sociological theorizing. The impact of these revolutions on many societies was
enormous, and many positive changes resulted. However, what attracted the attention of
many early theorists were not the positive consequences but the negative effects of such
changes. These writers were particularly disturbed by the resulting chaos and disorder,
especially in France. They were united in a desire to restore order to society. Some of the
more extreme thinkers of this period literally wanted a return to the peaceful and
relatively orderly days of the middle Ages. The more sophisticated thinkers recognized
that social change had made such a return impossible. Thus they sought instead to find

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new bases of order in societies that had been overturned by the political revolutions of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This interest in the issue of social order was one of
the major concerns of classical sociological theorists, especially Comte, Durkheim, and
Parsons.

3. 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‖ (Beilharz, 2005). Although
some sociologists favoured 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 overthrow of the capitalist system and its replacement by a socialist
system. Although Marx did not develop a theory of socialism per say, he spent a great
deal of time criticizing various aspects of capitalist society. However, Marx was atypical
in the early years of sociological theory. Most of the early theorists, such as Weber and
Durkheim, were opposed to socialism (at least as it was envisioned by Marx). 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 far greater role in shaping sociological
theory than did Marx‘s support of the socialist alternative to capitalism.

4. Urbanisation
Partly as a result of the Industrial Revolution, large numbers of people in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries were uprooted from their rural homes and moved to urban
settings. This massive migration was caused, in large part, by the jobs created by the
industrial system in the urban areas. But it presented many difficulties for those people
who had to adjust to urban life. In addition, the expansion of the cities produced a
seemingly endless list of urban problems—overcrowding, pollution, noise, traffic, and so
forth. The nature of urban life and its problems attracted the attention of many early
sociologists, especially Max Weber and Georg Simmel. Due to the ever increasing
population of people, there was the development of urban areas or centres to
accommodate the large volumes of people moving from rural areas.

5. Feminism
Women were always contributing one way or the other in society but their creations were,
over time, pushed to the periphery of the profession, annexed, discounted, or written out
of sociology‘s public record by the men who were organizing sociology as a professional
power base. 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 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 an 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 included in the
mainstream sociology.

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6. Religious Changes
Social changes brought on by political revolutions, the Industrial Revolution, and
urbanization had a profound effect on religiosity or religiousness. Religiosity in its
broadest sense is a comprehensive sociological term used to refer to the numerous aspects
of religious activity, dedication, and belief (religious doctrine). Thus in short, religiosity is
the involvement in religious activity in the extreme. Many early sociologists came from
religious backgrounds and were actively, and in some cases professionally, involved in
religion (Hinkle and Hinkle, 1954). They brought to sociology the same objectives they
espoused in their religious lives. They wished to improve people‘s lives (Vidichand
Lyman, 1985). For some (such as Comte), sociology was transformed into a religion. For
others, their sociological theories bore an unmistakable religious imprint. Durkheim
wrote one of his major works on religion. Morality played a key role not only in
Durkheim‘s sociology but also in the work of Talcott Parsons. A large portion of Weber‘s
work also was devoted to the religions of the world. Marx, too, had an interest in
religiosity, but his orientation was far more critical.

7. The growth of Science

This was in line with empiricism where by people sought for new forms of thinking and
wanted scientifically proven explanations to societal problems and status quo. As
sociological theory was being developed, there was an increasing emphasis on science, not
only in colleges and universities but in society as a whole. The technological products of
science were permeating every sector of life, and science was acquiring enormous
prestige. Those associated with the most successful sciences (physics, biology, and
chemistry) were accorded honoured places in society. Sociologists (especially Comte,
Durkheim, Spencer, Mead, and Schutz) from the beginning were preoccupied with
science, and many wanted to model sociology after the successful physical and biological
sciences. However, a debate soon developed between those who wholeheartedly accepted
the scientific model and those (such as Weber) who thought that distinctive
characteristics of social life made a wholesale adoption of a scientific model difficult and
unwise (Lepenies, 1988). The issue of the relationship between sociology and science is
debated to this day, although even a glance at the major journals in the field, at least in
the United States, indicates the predominance of those who favour sociology as a science.

8. Enlightenment Project
The Enlightenment was a period of remarkable intellectual development and change in
philosophical thought. A number of long-standing ideas and beliefs—many of which
related to social life—were overthrown and replaced during the Enlightenment. The most
prominent thinkers associated with the Enlightenment were the French philosophers
Charles Montesquieu (1689–1755) and Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) (B. Singer,
2005a, 2005b). The influence of the Enlightenment on sociological theory, however, was
more indirect and negative than it was direct and positive. As Irving Zeitlin puts it,
―Early sociology developed as a reaction to the Enlightenment‖ (1996:10). Overall, the
Enlightenment was characterized by the belief that people could comprehend and control
the universe by means of reason and empirical research. The view was that because the
physical world was dominated by natural laws, it was likely that the social world was too.
Thus it was up to the philosopher, using reason and research, to discover these social

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laws. Once they understood how the social world worked, the Enlightenment thinkers
had a practical goal—the creation of a ―better,‖ more rational world. With an emphasis on
reason, the Enlightenment philosophers were inclined to reject beliefs in traditional
authority. When these thinkers examined traditional values and institutions, they often
found them to be irrational—that is, contrary to human nature and inhibitive of human
growth and development. The mission of the practical and change-oriented philosophers
of the Enlightenment was to overcome these irrational systems. The theorists who were
most directly and positively influenced by Enlightenment thinking were Alexis de
Tocqueville and Karl Marx, although the latter formed his early theoretical ideas in
Germany.

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Sociology and its founders

 August Comte
 Emily Durkheim
 Karl Marx
 Marx Webber
 Talcott Parsons
 Herbert Spencer
 George Herbert
 Karl Popper

August Comte

 He was the first man who discovered the science of society after Chemistry, Physics and
Biology.
 He was a French sociologist who invented the term ―sociology‖ hence he is regarded as the
father of sociology.
 He was firm and confident to say that sociology is a science because he believed that
human behaviour could be measured through the use of methodology. Thus according to
Comte, sociology is a science of society.
 He developed the the philosophy of positivism, scientific knowledge gained through
positive affirmation of theories through strict scientific methods.
 He argued that sociology can and should study society following the patterns and
procedures of the natural sciences. Thus he developed 4 [four] methods of sociology, that is,
Observation, Experimentation, Comparison and Historical Analysis.
 Comte observed that the behaviour in a society is structured and it can be measured.

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)

 He was a French sociologist who was greatly motivated by Comte
 He was a functionalist who tried to explain the cause of human behaviour
 Durkheim defined sociology as the study of social facts. According to him there are social
facts that are dinstinct from biological and psychological facts. By social facts he meant
‘things’ which should be studied objectively.

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 Giddens (2009) notes that Durkheim believed that just like the study of biology and the
intermingling of human body parts, society is made up of different institutions which
cooperate for a one common goal which is a successful society enforced by solidarity and
consensus of its members.
 According to Durkheim, change in society may occur through adaptation and integration:
adaptation occurs when an existing institution re-adjusts to meet new needs while
integration occurs as society adopts a new element and make it part of itself.

Karl Marx (1818-183)

 He came from Germany.
 He contributed immersely to sociological ideas by introducing key concepts like social
class, social class conflict, social oppression, alienation and so on.
 He exposed the evil side of capitalism especially the exploitation of others, wealth and
power struggles in a society
 According to Marx society is the systematic way of ranking people into different
classes which he likened to the scientific principles of grading chemicals in terms of
their reaction.
 Sociology in the Marxist spectrum mainly looks at inequalities among members of a
society.
 It is the relationship that people have with the means of production (land and
factories) that determines their status in society. The least powerful has to sell its
labour to the more powerful in order to make a living in a capitalist society
(Haralambos and Holborn, 2013).
 Marx agued that society operates mainly through class conflict between the rich and
the poor.
 He believed that history of human society has been that of class conflict. He dreamed
of and worked hard towards realizing a classless society, one in which there will be no
expliotation and oppression of one class by another.

Max Weber (1864-1920)

 He was another prominent German social scientist.
 According to him sociology is the scientific study of human social action. Social action
refers to ‗action oriented to influence or influenced by another person or persons‘.
 He was more concerned with the interpretive understanding of human social action and
the meaning people attach to their own actions and behaviours and those of others.
 He mostly agreed with the Marxian theses but did not accept his idea that economic
forces are central to social change. He argued that we cannot understand human
behaviour by just looking at statistics.
 Every activity and behaviour of people needs to be interpreted. He argued that a
sociologist must aim at what are called subjective meanings.

*** Research on the views of Talcott Parsons, Herbert Spencer, George Herbert and Karl
Popper***

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