soci

• Early thinkers before Western Sociology

  • Confucius (551-479 BCE)
  • Socrates (469-399 BCE)
  • Aristotle (384-322 BCE)
  • Plato (360 BCE)
  • Ibn-Khaldun (1332-1406)
• Thinkers during the Renaissance and Enlightenment

  • Thomas Hobbes
  • John Locke
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  • Adam Smith
  • Immanuel Kant
• These early ideas formed some of the foundational issues and debates in sociology, which centre around questions such as: What does it mean to be human? How are societies formed? What holds societies together? What divides societies?
• Comte


  First defined sociology as a discipline in 1839
• Scholars who contributed to the development of sociology

  • Marx and Engels (The German Ideology - theory of materialist history)
  • Emile Durkheim (Suicide - analysed suicide statistics)
  • William Du Bois (The Philadelphia Negro - first major study of Black Americans)
  • Max Weber (The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism - examined role of ideas in development of capitalism)
  • Georg Simmel (The Philosophy of Money - examined how organization of money shifted human relations)
• American sociologists who contributed to the development of sociology in the USA

  • Charles Cooley (Human Nature and Social Order, 1912)
  • Robert Park and Burgess (Introduction to the Science of Sociology, 1921)
  • George Hebert Mead (Mind, Self and Society, 1934)
• The formation of the American Sociological Society was crucial to the development of the discipline in the USA
• The "Chicago School" associated with Robert Park and others developed Urban Sociology
• Scholars who contributed to the development of sociology in the 20th century

  • Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer (Dialectics of Enlightenment - asks why mankind is descending into barbarism)
  • David Reisman et al (The Lonely Crowd, 1950 - society has moved from tradition directed to outer directed)
  • Talcott Parsons (The Social System, 1951 - a treatise about social order)
  • Erving Goffman (The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 1956 - presents argument about social life as drama and builds micro-sociological approaches)
  • C Wright Mills (The Sociological Imagination, 1959)
• The British Sociological Association and the Indian Sociological Association were founded
• Topics in contemporary sociology

  • Globalization
  • Urban life in cities
  • The digital-information-network-cyborg society
  • Sociology of the new information order
  • Theorizing about possible futures
• The Digital Age


  Computerization of life, shift from analogue to digital, availability of small gadgets, mini-computers and chips that have revolutionized the way things work
• The Cyborg Age


  Ways in which human beings are more and more becoming adapted to and compelled to live with all manner of technologies, from transplants to space travel
• The Information Age


  Rapid growth of production and availability of all kinds of data and information
• The Network Society


  New ways of communicating and relating have developed, from mobile phones to social media platforms
• The Virtual Age


  Reality is less direct and instead mediated through some technology
• The Consumer Era


  Expansion of production and consumerism shapes contemporary social relations, especially in cities. Examines innovations in technology, expansion of white collar jobs, accessibility of more credit and creation of new groups of consumers
• Visual sociology expanded with the development of technologies in the camera, film and video
• Sociologists have only recently ventured into visual mediums to explore sociological topics such as how people deal with social hierarchies on a daily basis, or how they cope with the pressures of various social institutions
• One major development in sociology over the past 30 years has been the development of feminist methodology and research
• Sociology in the past was dominated by males and by the male perspective on society, so that certain topics were not covered – such as what happens in the domestic sphere or forms of labour dominated by women
• More researchers are investigating the lives of women and the condition of women in society
• Feminist research has an activist concern with investigating the subordination of women in societies across the world and how to effect social change, using innovative and more subjective types of methodologies
• Durkheim's concept of anomie refers to a state of normlessness where individuals are disconnected from societal values and expectations.
• Functionalism is concerned with the functions or purposes of social structures, such as how they contribute to maintaining social order and cohesion.
• The functionalist perspective sees society as being made up of different institutions that work together to maintain social stability.
• Anomie is associated with high levels of crime and deviance due to the lack of clear rules and guidelines governing behavior.
• In Durkheim's theory, suicide rates increase during times of economic downturn when individuals feel disconnected from their communities and unable to fulfill their roles within them.
• Anomie is associated with high levels of crime and deviance due to the lack of clear rules and guidelines governing behavior.
• The concept of anomie can be applied to modern societies characterized by rapid changes and uncertainty, leading to feelings of alienation and detachment from traditional sources of meaning and purpose.