CH 2 notes

Sociology Chapter 2

August Comte (French)

Founder of modern Sociology

Worked for Saint Simon who influenced his thinking

Positivism: Belief that the world can be best understood through scientific inquiry or laws.

Science over religion to have bias-free knowledge

Social patterns and laws are positivism

Book (The Course in Positive Philosophy)

Social problems such as crime and divorce can be reported once the laws or the social pattern are discovered.

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Harriet Martineu:

Femenist (equality)

Beliefs:

Society would improve when:

• Women and men were treated equally.

• Enlightened reform occurred

• Cooperation existed among all social class

Developed 1st systematic methodological international comparisons of social institutions in her books:

• Society in America 1837

• Retrospect of Western Travel

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Karl Marx:

German philosopher

Rejected Comte’s positivism

Capitalism: An economic system based on wage labor, private corporate ownership of goods and the means to produce them.

Social conflict → change in society

books:

Capital (Das Kapital)

Herbert Spencer:

Book:

Study of Sociology

Rejected Comet’s philosophy and Marx’s Theory.

Favored a form of government that allowed market forces to control capitalism.

Contributed a perspective on social order and social change,

the belief that the human beings best adapted to their environment, survive and prosper

poorly adapted, die out.

George Simmel (German):

Analyzed DYADS & TRIADS groups

Dyads: Two persons group

Triads: Three persons group

Emile Durkheim:

Social facts:

Patterned ways of acting, thinking, and feeling that exist outside any one individual but exert social control over each person.

Healthy society = stable

Pathological society = breakdown

book:

Sucide

Max weber:

Books:

Protestant Ethic &

The Spirit of Capitalism

Believed:

Verstehen:

Sociology should not analyze human action from the outside by copying the methods of natural science…

Instead, Sociology should recognize the meanings that people give to their actions.

1. Four types of actions:

   1. Traditional action (something to do with the past)

   2. Affectional action (emotions)

   3. means-end rational (plan for the future / having a purpose)

   4. Value-rationality (value / wants good)

American Theorists and Practitioners:

Sociology reached American unis in late 1800s & early 1900s.

Sociolgy 1st in Chicago

William Summer:

First professor in Yale

Franklin Giddings:

First full professor

Albion Small:

Wrote first textbook

Lester Ward:

Developed social research methods

Supported the use of scientific method & quantitative data

Du Bois:

known works:

Study of African-American community >Philadelphia

Wrote 70> books

Racism

One of the first to point out identity conflict of being black and American

Thorstein Veblen:

Conspicuous class:

How consumption is used to make a proof to other people about one’s class achievement.

Major work:

The Theory of the Leisure class.

Jane Addams:

Founded Hull House

(Provided opportunities for research and needy immigrants)

Author of a methodology text

Noble prize winner for the underprivileged

Charles Herbert Cooley:

One’s personality comes from one’s social influences.

Coined term “looking glass self”

Individual look at the mirror not so they could check themselves, but to check themselves to fit for other groups.

George Herbert Meas:

Robert Park:

Founder of Social ecology

Inner city:

Chaos is prevalent, it’ll happen no matter what. Not because of the residents, but rather the environment.

Theoretical Perspectives in Sociology:

Major perspectives or paradigms:

• Functionalists (work together to maintain stability)

• Conflict perspectives (inequality; social life is a struggle for scarce resources)

• Symbolic Interactionists (Behavior is learned in interaction)

• Postmodernists and Postcolonialisms perspectives

Functionalism:

Called Structural functional theory

Alfred Brown:

dynamic equilibrium

Robert Merton:

Manifest: functions are consequences that are anticipated

Latent: functions are unsought consequences or dysfunctions