HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY: FROM ITS ORIGIN TO THE PRESENT - CULTURE VOCABULARY - 2024

The history of sociology understood as an academic discipline began with the Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution. This, however, does not mean that there were no previous authors who tried to explain how society worked by taking into account various interrelated factors.

Sociology is a science whose object of study is society and the groups that compose it. Likewise, it also observes how individuals behave in relation to others and the context in which they live. For this you need the data provided by other social sciences, such as history, politics, statistics or economics.

Emile Durkheim, pioneer of sociology - Source: verapatricia_28

At the end of the 18th century, with the aforementioned revolutions, Europe and the United States underwent a great transformation. The appearance of new social classes and the conflicts between them led thinkers to seek scientific methods that would allow us to understand reality.

From that moment on, the discipline developed very quickly. Thinkers like Durkheim, Marx, Comte, Pareto or Weber were some of the pioneers in this science. Similarly, schools of thought such as Chicago or Frankfurt appeared, each with different postulates.

Origin of sociology

Although there were already authors who made sociological observations in Ancient Greece, the history of this discipline as a science did not begin until the early 19th century.

Precursors

Plato sculpture.

As noted, the study of society and the people that make it up goes back, at least, to Ancient Greece. Some authors that experts classify as precursors of the discipline were Herodotus, Plato or Thucydides, among others.

Later, during the Middle Ages, you can also find thinkers who made sociological considerations, such as Saint Augustine or Saint Thomas Aquinas.

Machiavelli, with his studies on politics, is also considered a forerunner of sociology.

Outside of Europe, the works closest to sociological studies were carried out by Asian philosophers who were followers of Confucius and by some Muslim authors, such as Ibn Khaldun. The latter, who lived between 1332 and 1406, is responsible for the creation of concepts such as cohesion and social conflict.

Confucius (551-479 BC). Chinese philosopher. Gouache on paper, c1770. The Granger Collection., Via Wikimedia Commons

The Enlightenment, which placed reason above religious doctrines, brought with it a greater study of individuals as members of society. Many of its most important thinkers, such as Voltaire or Montesquieu, wrote about the social and political institutions of the continent.

origins

Although all the previous authors carried out some studies that can be framed in sociology, this subject was not considered as an academic discipline until after the French Revolution, in 1789.

Although there are discrepancies on the matter, many experts affirm that the first person to use the term sociology was the French Emmanuel Joseph Sieyés. Later, in 1838, Auguste Comte, also French, used the same word to describe his works.

Auguste Comte

Auguste Comte was one of the founding fathers of sociology. Source: See page for author

Comte's work collected a good part of the ideas expressed by the enlightened philosophers, especially the concept of the social contract.

The French author tried to unify all studies on humanity using the social sciences. For him, human beings had gone through various historical stages and he thought that if this progress could be understood, any evil that afflicted society could be avoided.

Comte is considered by many to be one of the fathers of sociology. The author himself affirmed that it was a science in his work The Course in Positive Philosophy and, later, explained what its main purposes should be in the book An Overview of Positivism.

Emile Durkheim

Durkheim statue

Another author who is also called the father of sociology was Émile Durkheim. This Frenchman was the one who defined how sociological research should be carried out in his work The rules of the sociological method (1895).

One of the most important rules stated that every social fact is explained by another social fact, which implies that all social facts must be studied as if they were objects.

An example of the method that Durkheim advocated was his book Suicide (1897). For the author, taking his own life might seem, at first, an individual act, but in reality it is caused by several social causes.

Another of his most famous works, The Division of Labor (1893), analyzed the social division and came to the conclusion that it was due to certain social facts that forced the individual. It was a study closely related to the historical context of the Industrial Revolution.

Industrial Revolution

Factory workers from the time of the Industrial Revolution., via Wikimedia Commons

The Industrial Revolution represented a transformation that went far beyond economics. Society changed completely, with the appearance of new social classes facing each other.

While the industrial bourgeoisie and the oligarchy obtained great benefits, the workers lived poorly with precarious wages and with hardly any rights. Ideologies that sought to improve the situation of the workers, such as socialism, soon became popular.

Marx's work, with its study of the society of the time, includes many aspects that relate it to sociology. Along with the aforementioned Emile Durkheim, Max Weber or George Simmel, the ideologue of scientific socialism explained the changes that were taking place, as well as their future implications.

Academic discipline

As noted, the acceptance of sociology as an academic discipline was not straightforward. It was Durkheim who founded the first department of this matter in Europe, specifically at the University of Bordeaux, in 1895.

Somewhat earlier, in 1875, a course called "sociology" was developed in the United States. The speakers built on Comte's work and left Durkheim aside. In 1890, the University of Kansas began a continuing course in the subject.

Chicago School

As early as the 20th century, the University of Chicago took on a special role in the study of sociology. Top American sociologists came out of that center, and up to a third of graduate students chose their classrooms.

One of the highlights of this university was its commitment to field work. In this way, they put theory aside a lot and went out to study society. In the first moments, the main object of study was social problems.

Karl Marx

One of the reasons for lending less importance to theory was the stir that the works of Weber and Marx had caused. This led University of Chicago officials to focus on minority rights, as well as discovering the relationship between society and individuals.

Germany

Meanwhile, Germany was becoming the most important European country in the field of discipline. Max Weber, for many the founder of modern sociology, created a department at the University of Munich. There he began to develop his ideas: anti-positivist sociology.

On the other hand, the Institute for Social Research was founded at the University of Frankfurt, the germ of the future Frankfurt School. His line of thought was called critical psychology, which played an important role after World War II.

Members of the Frankfurt School. Karl August Wittfogel, Rose Wittfogel (1889–), unbekannt, Christiane Sorge, Karl Korsch, Hedda Korsch, Käthe Weil, Margarete Lissauer (1876–1932), Béla Fogarasi, Gertrud Alexander - stehend v. li. n. re.: Hede Massing, Friedrich Pollock, Eduard Ludwig Alexander, Konstantin Zetkin, Georg Lukács, Julian Gumperz, Richard Sorge, Karl Alexander (Kind), Felix Weil. Source: See page for author

Thanks to the work carried out, the members of the Frankfurt School soon became well known. Among his contributions, he highlighted the development of new perspectives on the theories of Marx, Weber and Freud.

The arrival of the Nazis to power caused many of the German sociologists to flee the country. The destination chosen by the majority was the US, where they collaborated in promoting discipline.

First half of the 20th century - Present

The forced exile of many European scholars by World War II made the United States the center of sociological studies. It was there that both sociology focused on social evolution, as well as that concerned with how individuals relate to each other, evolved to reach their own entity.

In the 30s of the 20th century, Talcott Parson developed the so-called theory of action, which combined the two sociological aspects named above. Somewhat later, they began to study social phenomenology, then turned into social constructionism.

Talcott parson

Politicization of the discipline

Already during the decades that separated the two world wars, the study of sociology was affected by totalitarian governments. All of them sought to control the matter politically so that their conclusions would favor their stay in power.

In the Soviet Union, sociology was controlled by power until it practically disappeared. In China, for its part, it was banned in 1952 as it was considered a bourgeois pseudoscience.

At the same time, the most conservative universities in the Western world also tried to undermine the foundations of the matter. One of the reasons was that they considered that their conclusions tended to tend towards the left or liberalism.

Postmodernism

In the 70s of the 20th century, a new trend appeared within the discipline: postmodernism. He is, in addition to being based on classical social science, he introduced elements of structuralism and phenomenology in his sociological studies.

This current, according to some experts, opposed the conclusions of thinkers such as Foucault or Lévi-Strauss, who had put the human being at the center of the discipline.

XXI century and social networks

New technologies are leading a new social revolution. Its use is affecting all areas, from the economy to individual behavior.

For this reason, the sociology of this century is paying great attention to how these technologies are transforming society. An example is the studies that are being carried out on the effect of social networks, which have changed the way individuals relate to each other and, therefore, how society is organized.

Another important factor has been the last great economic crisis. Sociologists are still studying the changes that it has brought about and that have not been limited only to the economy.

References

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4. Crossman. Ashley. The History of Sociology Is Rooted in Ancient Times. Retrieved from thoughtco.com
5. William Form; Robert EL Faris. Sociology. Retrieved from britannica.com
6. Caroline Hodges Persell; Jennifer Gerdes. The Field of Sociology. Retrieved from asanet.org
7. Crossman, Ashley. Introduction to Sociology. Retrieved from thoughtco.com