1. History of Sociology
Dr. John Bradford

2. Modernity: A timeline
• Roughly the historical period after the Middle Ages
• Distinguished from small, pre-industrial, “primitive”,
feudal, or traditional societies.

3. What is “Modernity”?
Rough historical markers:
• Protestant Reformation (~1517)
• ‘Enlightenment’ (1700s) *see
notes below]
• Industrial revolution (1700s-
1800s)
• American (1776), French (1789),
and Haitian (1791) revolutions

4. Transformations of Modernity:
Overview and Summary
1. Science and Technology
• New belief in progress based on
objective, empirical science
• Traditions and old authorities
undermined, challenged
2. Work and Social Relationships
• Specialized division of labor (Durkheim)
• Relationships between people increasingly
become means to ends, rather than ends in
themselves (Tönnies, Weber)
• Production primarily for profit and sale, nor for
fixed needs and personal use (Marx)

5. Auguste Comte (1798-1857)
• Comte first coined the term “sociology”
– Born into an aristocratic Catholic family in
France; collaborator and secretary of Claude
Henri de Saint-Simon
– Originally used the phrase “social physics” but
discarded it after a Belgian scientist
(Quételet) usurped the phrase in his book An
Essay on Social Physics
• Proposed that a science of society could be
based on objective, empirical observation.
• Believed that the methods of natural
science could radically transform society

6. Gabriel Tarde
(not in your book)
- Contemporary of Durkheim’s
- Argued that society was based
primarily on imitation, which we did
mostly unconsciously.
- “Society is imitation and imitation is 1843-1904
a kind of somnambulism”
- Somnambulism = sleepwalking
- Note: the phenomena of imitation has
been given renewed attention with the
discovery of “mirror neurons”

7. Emile Durkheim and ‘Social Facts’
• Social Fact = “*social facts+ consist of
manners of acting, thinking and feeling
external to the individual, which are
invested with a coercive power by
virtue of which they exercise control
over him.”
• Social facts have a reality sui generis
– ‘Sui generis’ = Latin phrase meaning, ‘of
1858-1917
its own kind’
– Social facts cannot be reduced to
individual facts.

8. Durkheim and Division of Labor
Traditional Society Modern Society
Mechanical solidarity = a form of Organic solidarity =
social interdependence based on form of social interdependence based
commonly shared beliefs and strong on differentiated/specialized division
group identity. Based on very simple of labor.
division of labor.
Similar to simple organism or machine: Similar to a complex organisms; its organs
individuals are mostly functionally are not interchangeable.
equivalent and substitutable.
‘Society is in the individual’ ‘The Individual is in Society’

9. Collective Conscience and Ritual
Solidarity
• Collective consciousness/conscience is a collection of
beliefs, ideas, and sentiments shared by members of a
community. Basically, a shared sense of reality and
identity based in common/shared experiences.
• Ritual solidarity refers to the bonds experienced by both
participants and spectators of rituals, who focus their
collective attention on a common object of perception.
‘Mass Games’ of North Korea

10. Durkheim and ‘Anomie’
• Anomie = 1. sense of
disconnectedness, “alienation,”
loneliness, and isolation. 2. Lack
of moral direction.
– This occurs more frequently in
modern society, where people are
less integrated and often feel they
don’t belong.
– This is experienced individually as a
‘personal trouble’, but is, according
to Durkheim, also a ‘social fact’- i.e.
has social (not individual) causes.

11. Durkheim and Religion
• Religion is an expression of, and a
way of creating, social order. -“God
is Society, writ large”
• All societies categorize things as
either sacred (holy) or profane
(everyday).
The Sacred: all things set apart as
special; have high symbolic value;
society demands reverence/awe toward
them
The Profane: ordinary or mundane
things with no special symbolic
significance

12. Sacred and Profane
• Societies unify around shared sacred symbols
representing (and reinforcing) their shared beliefs
and shared sense of common identity.
• A totem is an animal or other natural object that
spiritually or symbolically represents a people and
their common origin. Similar to a mascot or logo.

13. Ferdinand Tönnies
(not in your book)
Two types of social relationships:
1. Relationships that people enter as ends
in themselves, or Gemeinschaft =
intimate or communal association.
2. Relationships that people enter into as
means to an end, or Gesellschaft = goal-
driven, impersonal relationships Ferdinand Tönnies
(1855 – 1936)
• Relationships in modern society are
more frequently gesellshaft
relationships. Why?

14. Max Weber:
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
• ‘Spirit of Capitalism’ = the calling
to make more money as an end in
itself, and to work hard for its own
sake as a sign of salvation. This is
a new psychological disposition.
• The Protestant Ethic is the ‘Spirit
of Capitalism’. The Protestant
Ethic basically means sacrificing
and saving for the future and
adopting a rational (= calculating) 1864-1920
attitude towards life.
• Implication: Secular capitalism
has religious origins.

15. Max Weber:
‘Rational’ and ‘Non-rational’
• Rational means ‘efficient’;
adopting the most efficient means
to achieve a given end.
(Gesellschaft)
• Non-rational (not irrational!)
means non-calculating
behavior, including
habits, traditions, and anything
you do for its own sake (e.g. for
the fun of it, or because it 1864-1920
constitutes a way of life for you).

16. Karl Marx and Conflict Theory
• Father of modern
socialism, communism, and conflict
theory.
• Marxism is a Western intellectual
tradition spanning 150
years, consisting of 3 components:
1. A political doctrine
2. A philosophy (or anti-philosophy)
of History
3. and an analysis of the functioning 1818-1883
of the economy

17. Marx’s Materialist Theory of History
• Question: What is more
important than what people in a
society think and believe?
• Answer: What they do and make!
All people everywhere have to
produce their means of
‘subsistence’ (livelihood).
• Production is primary: it is a
necessary precondition for
everything else. You must be fed
before you can philosophize!

18. Materialist Theory of History
• How stuff is produced is what matters most. This
is the ‘base’ of society. Marx calls the
rules, customs, laws, and beliefs determining
how the wealth should be distributed, the
superstructure.
Superstructure
Ideas about how to
distribute surplus
Base = foundation
How stuff is produced
(Relationships and
Technology)

19. What is capitalism?
For Marx, Capitalism is a social
order characterized by two
conditions:
1. Production for profit
2. Wage-labor

20. What is capitalism?
1. Production for Profit: Goods
(‘commodities’) are produced for
sale in order to make a profit.
a) “For Sale” and not for immediate
use or consumption.
b) “For profit” and not according to
custom, need, tradition, or to
maintain a fixed standard of living.
– M-C-M’: The Circuit of
Capital

21. What is capitalism?
2. Wage-Labor: Production is
based on wage-labor, i.e. people
who, in order to survive, must
sell their capacity to work in
exchange for a salary or wage.
• These workers do not:
a) own the machines that they use
(‘the means of production’),
b) own the wealth that they
produce,
c) nor do they acquire the profits
made from the sale of that which
they produce!

22. Capitalism as a Conflict of Interests
• Capitalism arises with industrialization, when
production itself becomes “socialized”, requiring
large numbers of people, operating machinery.
• Control of what is produced, however, is
privatized, or centralized in the hands of the few
, for private gain.
• A conflict of interest develops between workers
(the proletarians) and the owners (the bourgeoisie)
of the machines or ‘means of production’
Workers Owners
(many) (few)

23. Exploitation in capitalism
• For Marx, capitalism is
inherently exploitative. There is
a conflict of interest because
workers produce the
wealth, but receive in wages
only a fraction of the wealth (or
‘value’) they produce. This is
exploitation.
• The value that workers produce
over and above what they
receive in wages is known as
SURPLUS VALUE.
Equality is only a mask,
or appearance

24. Reality is not what it appears to be
Is there such thing as “laws” of society, like there are
laws of physics? Can we use science and reason to
discover these hidden laws?

25. Summary of the Classics:
What do they all have in common, if anything?
– They are all interested in the difference between
appearance and reality.
– They intend to create a new map that better describes a
new social world.
“The Map is Not the Territory”
-Alfred Korzybski

26. Summary of the Classics:
What do they all have in common, if anything?
– They are all ultimately motivated by a desire to make
society better, i.e. to improve the human condition.
This requires objective, impartial knowledge about
society.
– Analogy: to build a better airplane, you first have to
understand the laws of aerodynamics!