Origin and Development of Sociology and Anthropology | ISC Class 11 Sociology Notes

This note covers the origin and development of sociology and social anthropology: what the two disciplines are, the sociological imagination, the intellectual and material conditions in which sociology was born, the growth of sociology and social anthropology in India, the nature and scope of sociology, the theories of Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and Karl Marx, and how sociology relates to political science, economics, anthropology, history, psychology and philosophy.

What are sociology and social anthropology?

Sociology is the study of human social life, groups and societies. Its subject matter is our own behaviour as social beings.

A widely used western definition calls sociology "the study of human groups and societies, giving particular emphasis to the analysis of the industrialised world" (Giddens 2001: 699).

The word itself joins the Latin socius (companion or associate) and the Greek logos (study or science). It was coined by Auguste Comte, who is considered to be the founder of sociology.

Definition: Sociology. The systematic study of human social life, groups and societies, whose subject matter is our own behaviour as social beings.

Anthropology comes from the Greek anthropos (human being) and logos. In most countries it incorporates archaeology, physical anthropology, cultural history, many branches of linguistics and the study of all aspects of life in "simple societies".

The branches closest to sociology are social anthropology and cultural anthropology. A standard western definition of social anthropology is the study of simple societies of non-western and therefore "other" cultures.

What is the sociological imagination?

The American sociologist C. Wright Mills used the term sociological imagination for the ability to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society (Mills 1959).

Mills distinguished between 'the personal troubles of the milieu' and 'the public issues of social structure'. Troubles occur within the individual and their immediate relations with others. Issues go beyond these local environments.

His own example was that "When a society is industrialised, a peasant becomes a worker; a feudal lord is liquidated or becomes a businessman." One of the tasks of sociology is to unravel the connection between a personal problem and a public issue.

Choosing subjects at school worries the individual student, yet it is shaped by the job market, the student's gender and the family's social background. Homelessness, similarly, is a public issue: the state addresses it through schemes such as the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna-Gramin, operationalised from 2016 by the Ministry of Rural Development.

How did new intellectual ideas give birth to sociology?

People have always observed and reflected upon the societies in which they live. This is evident in the writings of philosophers, religious teachers and legislators of all civilisations and epochs. Sociology, however, is a systematic study of society that emerged only in modern times.

The Enlightenment and the idea of a science of society

The Enlightenment, a European intellectual movement of the late 17th and 18th centuries, emphasised reason and individualism. Scientific knowledge advanced greatly.

There was a growing conviction that the methods of the natural sciences should and could be extended to the study of human affairs.

For example, poverty, so far seen as a 'natural phenomenon', began to be seen as a 'social problem' caused by human ignorance or exploitation. Poverty could therefore be studied and redressed.

One way of studying it was the social survey, based on the belief that human phenomena can be classified and measured. Thinkers of the early modern era were convinced that progress in knowledge promised the solution to all social ills.

Evolution and the classification of societies

Influenced by scientific theories of natural evolution, and by findings about pre-modern societies made by early travellers and colonial administrators, sociologists and social anthropologists sought to categorise societies into types and to distinguish stages in social development.

These features reappear in the 19th century in the works of early sociologists, Auguste Comte, Karl Marx and Herbert Spencer. Societies were classified, for instance, as:

• Pre-modern societies, such as hunters and gatherers, pastoral and agrarian, and agrarian and non-industrial civilisations.
• Modern societies, such as the industrialised societies.

Such an evolutionary vision assumed that the west was necessarily the most advanced and civilised. Non-western societies were often seen as barbaric and less developed.

Darwin's ideas about organic evolution were a dominant influence on early sociological thought. Society was often compared with living organisms, and efforts were made to trace its growth through stages comparable to those of organic life.

This way of looking at society as a system of parts, each part playing a given function, influenced the study of social institutions like the family or the school and structures such as stratification.

How did industrialisation and capitalism shape sociology?

Most of the concerns of sociology date back to a time when European society was undergoing tumultuous changes in the 18th and 19th centuries with the advent of capitalism and industrialisation.

The Industrial Revolution was based upon a new, dynamic form of economic activity, capitalism, which became the driving force behind the growth of industrial manufacturing.

Under capitalism, entrepreneurs engaged in the sustained, systematic pursuit of profit. Markets acted as the key instrument of productive life. Goods, services and labour became commodities whose use was determined by rational calculation.

What changed when England industrialised?

England was the centre of the Industrial Revolution. Before industrialisation, agriculture and textiles were the chief occupations of the British, and most people lived in villages with peasants and landlords, blacksmiths and leather workers, weavers and potters.

That society was small. It was hierarchical, meaning that the status and class positions of different people were clearly defined. It was also characterised by close interaction. With industrialisation each of these features changed.

One of the most fundamental aspects of the new order was the degradation of labour. Both radical and conservative thinkers were appalled at the decline in the status of the common labourer and the skilled craftsman.

The factory and its mechanical division of labour were often seen as a deliberate attempt to destroy the peasant, the artisan, the family and the local community. According to Karl Marx the factory was oppressive, yet potentially liberating, because there workers learnt both collective functioning and concerted efforts for better conditions.

The new significance of clock-time was another sign of modern society. For both employer and employee, 'time is now money: it is not passed but spent.'

Britain urbanised quickly: in 1810, 20 per cent of the population lived in towns and cities; by 1910, 80 per cent did. In India the same process had a different impact. With the entry of British manufactured goods, more people moved into agriculture.

Why does Europe matter, and how did the disciplines grow in India?

Many issues raised in industrial Europe, for example urbanisation or factory production, are pertinent to all modern societies, even though their specific features may vary. Our past as Indians is also closely linked to the history of British capitalism and colonialism.

Capitalism in the west entailed a world-wide expansion. Between the 17th and 19th centuries an estimated 24 million Africans were enslaved, and 11 million of them survived the journey to the Americas.

In the 1800s the British took indentured labour from India in ships to run cotton and sugar plantations in distant lands such as Surinam, the West Indies and the Fiji Islands.

The colonial background

Colonialism was an essential part of modern capitalism and industrialisation, so western writings on capitalism help in understanding social change in India. Yet the impact of industrialisation in India was not necessarily the same as in the west.

Marx noted how British manufactures were poured into India, "to the ruin of the native cotton fabrics once so celebrated" (Marx 1853, cited in Desai 1975).

Sociology in India also had to deal with western ideas about Indian society that were not always correct. In keeping with Victorian evolutionary ideas, western writers saw the Indian village as unchanging, a remnant of what was called "the infancy of society".

Sociology and social anthropology in India

Formal university teaching of sociology in India began in 1919 at the University of Bombay. In the 1920s, the universities at Calcutta and Lucknow also began programmes of teaching and research in sociology and anthropology.

In the west, sociology and social anthropology were kept apart. In India the story is quite different. M.N. Srinivas observed that "In a culture and society such as India's, 'the other' can be encountered literally next door" (Srinivas 1966:205).

Social anthropology in India moved gradually from a preoccupation with 'primitive people' to the study of peasants, ethnic groups, social classes, ancient civilisations and modern industrial societies. No rigid divide exists between the two subjects in India.

Perhaps because of its colonial backdrop, Indian sociology has been particularly thoughtful and reflexive about its practice (Chaudhuri 2003).

What is the nature of sociology?

Sociology is different from philosophical and religious reflection and from our everyday common sense. It has from its beginnings understood itself as a science.

Unlike commonsensical observations, philosophical reflections or theological commentaries, sociology is bound by scientific canons of procedure. Its statements must follow rules of evidence that allow others to check on, or repeat, its findings.

How is sociology different from common sense?

Common sense explanations are generally naturalistic and/or individualistic. A naturalistic explanation assumes that one can identify 'natural' reasons for behaviour.

Common sense is also unreflective, since it does not ask itself "Why do I hold this view?" The sociologist must be ready to ask of any belief, no matter how cherished, "is this really so?"

Sociology also traces unintended consequences. After the Kargil War, the Government of India decided that compensation for soldiers' deaths should go to their widows. This led to many forced marriages of widows with their husbands' brothers, so that the money stayed with the deceased man's patrilineal family.

The sociologist as a reporter of facts

Sociology's focus is not on norms and values as they ought to be. Its concern is with the way they function in actual societies. Empirical study of societies is an important part of what sociologists do.

Peter Berger compared the sociologist to a spy: "His/her job is to report as accurately as he/she can about a certain terrain" (Berger 1963:16-17). The sociologist still has social responsibility as a citizen, but that asking is not sociological asking.

Robert Bierstedt's characteristics

Robert Bierstedt summed up the nature of sociology in a set of contrasts that are widely used:

• It is a social science, not a natural science.
• It is categorical, not normative: it studies what is, not what ought to be.
• It is a pure science, not an applied one, though its knowledge can be applied.
• It is abstract, not concrete: it studies patterns, not particular events.
• It is generalising, not particularising.
• It is a general science, not a special one.
• It is both rational and empirical.

What is the scope of sociology?

The scope of sociological study is extremely wide. It can work at three levels.

• Interactions between individuals, such as a shopkeeper with a customer, teachers and students, two friends or family members.
• National issues, such as unemployment, caste conflict, the effect of state policies on the forest rights of the tribal population, or rural indebtedness.
• Global social processes, such as the impact of new flexible labour regulations on the working class, of the electronic media on the young, or of the entry of foreign universities on the country's education system.

What defines the discipline is therefore not just what it studies (family, trade unions or villages) but how it studies a chosen field. Sociology sees society as an interconnected whole, in which economic, political, familial, cultural and educational institutions are linked.

The individual is both constrained by these institutions and yet can change them to an extent. This two-way link is what sociologists call a dialectic.

Two schools of thought on scope

Early sociologists debated how wide the scope should be. Two positions are commonly distinguished.

• The specialistic or formal school, associated with Georg Simmel, held that sociology should study only the forms of social relationships, keeping it a distinct, specialised science.
• The synthetic school, associated with Emile Durkheim, L.T. Hobhouse and Pitirim Sorokin, held that sociology should study society as a whole and draw together the findings of the other social sciences.

Most sociologists today combine both views: sociology has its own concepts and methods, yet it draws freely on neighbouring disciplines.

How did Auguste Comte found sociology on positivism?

Auguste Comte, the French scholar considered to be the founder of sociology, believed that sociology would contribute to the welfare of humanity. He gave the discipline its name.

His approach is called positivism. Positivism holds that valid knowledge about society, as about nature, comes from observation, experiment, comparison and classification, and not from speculation.

Comte believed that society follows laws that can be discovered in the same way as the laws of physics. Sociology, in this view, is a science of society modelled on the natural sciences.

Definition: Positivism. Comte's view that society can be studied scientifically, using observation, experiment and comparison, to discover the laws that govern social life.

What is the law of three stages?

Comte held that human thought, and with it society, passes through three stages:

1. Theological stage: events are explained by the will of gods or supernatural beings. It moves from fetishism through polytheism to monotheism.
2. Metaphysical stage: supernatural beings are replaced by abstract forces or essences, such as 'nature', as explanations.
3. Positive or scientific stage: people give up the search for ultimate causes and instead observe facts and discover the laws connecting them.
4. Social outcome: Comte expected that society organised on positive knowledge would be guided by scientific understanding towards order and progress.

Draw three steps rising from left to right, labelled Theological, Metaphysical and Positive. Under each, write how events are explained: gods, abstract forces, observed laws.

Hierarchy of sciences, statics and dynamics

Comte arranged the sciences in a hierarchy: mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and, at the top, sociology, the most complex of all.

He divided sociology into social statics, the study of social order and how the parts of society hold together, and social dynamics, the study of social progress and change.

What did Herbert Spencer add through the theory of evolution?

Herbert Spencer, an English thinker, is named alongside Comte and Marx as one of the early sociologists who classified societies into types and stages.

For Spencer, evolution is a universal process. Societies move from simple to complex and from homogeneous (alike) to heterogeneous (differentiated) forms.

As a society grows, its parts become specialised, which is called differentiation, and are then co-ordinated with one another, which is called integration. Spencer contrasted earlier militant societies, based on compulsory co-operation and war, with industrial societies, based on voluntary co-operation and individual freedom.

What is Social Darwinism?

Spencer coined the phrase "survival of the fittest". Applying the idea of natural selection to human societies came to be called Social Darwinism.

In this view, competition between individuals and societies allows the fittest to survive and progress. Spencer therefore opposed state measures such as relief for the poor, which he thought interfered with this natural process.

Critics argue that Social Darwinism was used to justify inequality and the domination of non-western peoples. This matches the wider evolutionary vision that assumed the west was necessarily the most advanced.

What is the organic analogy?

The organic analogy compares society to a living organism. Spencer identified three systems in society, like the systems of a body: a sustaining system (production), a distributing system (transport and trade) and a regulating system (government).

How did Emile Durkheim build structural functionalism?

Emile Durkheim, the French sociologist, sought to establish a clear scope and method for sociology. A major theme of his work is that societies exert social constraint over the actions of their members.

He argued that sociology studies social facts: ways of acting, thinking and feeling that are external to the individual and exercise a constraining power over them.

Structural functionalism sees society as a system of interrelated parts, such as family, religion and economy. Each part performs a function that helps maintain the whole, as each organ does in a body. Durkheim laid the foundation for this approach.

Division of labour and solidarity

In The Division of Labour in Society, Durkheim argued that the main effect of the division of labour is moral as well as economic: it binds people together. He called this binding force solidarity.

When rapid change leaves people without clear norms, Durkheim spoke of anomie, a condition of normlessness.

The sacred and the profane

In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Durkheim studied totemism among Australian Aboriginal clans. He found that all religions divide the world into two separate spheres.

• The sacred: things set apart and forbidden, treated with awe and reverence and protected by rules and rituals, such as a totem.
• The profane: the ordinary, everyday and useful things of life.

Religion, for Durkheim, is a system of beliefs and practices relating to sacred things that unites its followers into one moral community. When a clan worships its totem, it is in effect honouring society itself, so religion strengthens solidarity.

How did Max Weber develop interpretive sociology?

Max Weber, the German sociologist, worked in what can be termed political sociology as well as on religion and the economy. His approach is called interpretive sociology.

Weber argued that sociology must understand the meanings individuals attach to their actions. He called this method Verstehen, a German word for understanding: the sociologist tries to see an action from the actor's point of view.

The basic unit of study is social action: behaviour to which the actor attaches a meaning and which takes account of the behaviour of others. Weber also built ideal types, models that exaggerate the key features of a phenomenon so that real cases can be compared with them.

Power, authority and its three types

Power is the ability to carry out one's will even against resistance. Authority is power that people accept as legitimate. Weber identified three types of authority by the source of their legitimacy.

Charismatic authority is unstable, because it depends on one person. Over time it tends to become traditional or rational-legal, a process Weber called the routinisation of charisma.

What are the features of bureaucracy?

Bureaucracy is the purest form of rational-legal authority. Weber's ideal type of bureaucracy has these features:

• Fixed jurisdiction: each office has official duties set by rules.
• Hierarchy: offices are ranked, each lower office supervised by a higher one.
• Written records: work is based on written documents, the files.
• Expertise: officials are trained specialists appointed on the basis of qualifications.
• Full-time salaried posts: officials are paid a salary and do not own their office.
• Impersonality: rules are applied to everyone equally, without personal feelings.

How did Karl Marx explain society through conflict?

Karl Marx, the German thinker, is usually associated with the conflict perspective. Conflict theory sees society as marked by struggle between groups with unequal access to resources.

Marx argued that the way a society produces its material life, its economic base, shapes its law, politics, religion and ideas. Human beings make history, but within conditions they did not choose.

What is a class?

For Marx, a class is a group of people who share the same relationship to the means of production, such as land or factories. In capitalism the two main classes are the bourgeoisie, who own the means of production, and the proletariat, who own nothing but their labour and sell it for wages.

Workers produce more value than they are paid. The owners keep this surplus value as profit, which Marx called exploitation. Marx also used the term alienation for workers' loss of control over their work and its products.

How does class struggle drive history?

In The Communist Manifesto, written with Friedrich Engels, Marx argued that the history of all existing society is the history of class struggles, such as those between master and slave or lord and serf. He saw history moving through stages:

1. Primitive communism: property is held in common and there are no classes.
2. Ancient (slave) society: masters own slaves.
3. Feudal society: lords own land worked by serfs.
4. Capitalist society: the bourgeoisie own factories worked by the proletariat.
5. Socialist and communist society: workers, united by class consciousness, overthrow capitalism and create a classless society.

A class becomes a force for change only when its members become aware of their shared interests. Marx distinguished a class in itself, defined only by position, from a class for itself, which is conscious and organised.

How does sociology compare with political science, economics and history?

Sociology is one of a group of social sciences, which also includes anthropology, economics, political science and history. The divisions among them are not clear-cut, and all share common interests, concepts and methods.

The distinctions are to some extent arbitrary. To differentiate the social sciences rigidly would exaggerate the differences and gloss over the similarities. Feminist theories have shown the greater need for an interdisciplinary approach.

Sociology and economics

Economics is the study of the production and distribution of goods and services. Traditional economics focused on a narrow 'economic activity', namely the allocation of scarce goods and services, and sought precise laws of economic behaviour.

The sociological approach looks at economic behaviour in a broader context of social norms, values, practices and interests. The large investment in advertising, for example, is linked to the need to reshape lifestyles and consumption patterns.

Sociologists often envy economists for the precision of their terms and measures. Yet economists' predictive abilities often suffer because they neglect individual behaviour, cultural norms and institutional resistance. Sociology usually does not provide technical solutions, but it questions the social desirability of a goal itself.

Sociology and political science

Conventional political science focused on political theory and government administration. Sociology studies all aspects of society, whereas political science restricted itself mainly to power as embodied in formal organisation.

Sociology stresses the interrelationships between sets of institutions, including government; political science tends to look at processes within government. Max Weber worked in political sociology, which now studies actual political behaviour such as voting patterns and support for parties.

Sociology and history

Historians almost as a rule study the past; sociologists are more interested in the contemporary or recent past. History studied concrete details, while sociology abstracts from concrete reality, categorises and generalises, seeking causal relationships.

Conventional history was about kings and war. Changes in land relations or gender relations were less studied by historians but formed the core of the sociologist's interest. Today history is far more sociological, and social history is the stuff of history.

How does sociology differ from psychology, anthropology and philosophy?

Sociology and psychology

Psychology is often defined as the science of behaviour. It involves itself primarily with the individual: intelligence and learning, motivations and memory, the nervous system and reaction time, hopes and fears.

Sociology tries to understand behaviour as it is organised in society, that is, the way personality is shaped by the economic and political system, family and kinship, culture, norms and values. Social psychology serves as a bridge between the two.

In his well-known study of suicide, Durkheim left out the individual intentions of those who commit suicide in favour of statistics about their social characteristics.

Sociology and social anthropology

Sociology was deemed the study of modern, complex societies and social anthropology the study of simple societies. Social anthropology studied such societies as wholes, specialising by area, for example the Andaman Islands, the Nuers or Melanesia.

Social anthropology was marked by long fieldwork, living in the community studied and using ethnographic methods. Sociologists often relied on the survey method and quantitative data. Today methods are drawn from both, and in India the two have a very close relationship.

Sociology and philosophy

Philosophical and religious thinkers often reflect on what is moral or immoral, the desirable way of living and the good society. Sociology also studies norms and values, but as they function in actual societies, not as goals people should pursue.

Sociology grew out of social philosophy, and early founders such as Comte and Spencer were philosophers as well. It broke away by insisting on empirical evidence that others can check.

Glossary

• Sociology: The study of human social life, groups and societies, whose subject matter is our own behaviour as social beings.
• Social anthropology: Traditionally the study of simple, non-western societies as wholes, through long fieldwork and ethnographic methods.
• Sociological imagination: Mills's term for the ability to see the link between personal troubles and public issues of social structure.
• Positivism: Comte's view that society can be studied scientifically through observation and comparison to discover social laws.
• Social Darwinism: The application of natural selection and the survival of the fittest to human individuals and societies.
• Organic analogy: Spencer's comparison of society with a living organism whose interdependent parts grow more complex over time.
• Structural functionalism: The view that society is a system of interrelated parts, each performing a function that maintains the whole.
• Mechanical solidarity: Durkheim's term for cohesion based on sameness and shared beliefs in societies with a low division of labour.
• Organic solidarity: Durkheim's term for cohesion based on interdependence that arises from a high division of labour in modern societies.
• Sacred: Things set apart and forbidden, treated with awe and reverence, in contrast to the ordinary, everyday profane.
• Verstehen: Weber's method of interpretive understanding, which grasps an action from the meaning the actor gives it.
• Bureaucracy: An organisation based on rational-legal authority, with fixed rules, a hierarchy of offices, files and salaried experts.
• Class struggle: Marx's idea that conflict between owning and non-owning classes is the driving force of historical change.
• Capitalism: A system of economic enterprise based on market exchange and private ownership of assets and the means of production.
• Social constraint: The conditioning influence that the groups and societies we belong to exert on our behaviour.

Common errors and misconceptions

• Misconception: Sociology is only organised common sense. Correct: Common sense is naturalistic, individualistic and unreflective; sociology follows rules of evidence that others can check and asks of every belief, "is this really so?"
• Misconception: Sociology has nothing to do with values. Correct: Sociology studies norms and values, but as they function in actual societies, not as ideals people ought to pursue.
• Misconception: Mechanical solidarity belongs to modern factory societies because machines are used there. Correct: Mechanical solidarity is based on sameness in traditional societies; modern societies have organic solidarity based on interdependence.
• Misconception: For Marx, a class is defined by income alone. Correct: Marx defined classes by their relationship to the means of production, as owners or non-owners.
• Misconception: Authority and power mean the same thing in Weber. Correct: Power is the ability to impose one's will; authority is power accepted as legitimate, which Weber divided into traditional, charismatic and rational-legal types.
• Misconception: In India, sociology and social anthropology are sharply separate, as in many western countries. Correct: No rigid divide exists between them in India, where 'the other' can be encountered literally next door.
• Misconception: Industrialisation affected India exactly as it affected Britain. Correct: Britain urbanised rapidly, but in India the entry of British manufactured goods pushed more people into agriculture.

Exam-style questions with model answers

Q1. Define sociology and name the thinker who is considered its founder. [2 marks]

1. Sociology is the study of human social life, groups and societies; its subject matter is our own behaviour as social beings.
2. Auguste Comte, the French scholar who also gave the discipline its name, is considered the founder of sociology.

Q2. State two differences between the sacred and the profane in Durkheim's study of religion. [2 marks]

1. The sacred consists of things set apart and forbidden, such as a totem, while the profane consists of ordinary, everyday things.
2. The sacred is treated with awe and protected by rituals and rules, while the profane is approached in a routine, practical way.

Q3. Explain Auguste Comte's law of three stages. [4 marks]

1. Comte held that human thought, and society with it, passes through three stages, and that sociology could discover such laws through positive, scientific methods.
2. In the theological stage, events are explained by the will of gods or supernatural beings, moving from fetishism to polytheism to monotheism.
3. In the metaphysical stage, supernatural beings are replaced by abstract forces or essences, such as 'nature', as explanations.
4. In the positive or scientific stage, people stop seeking ultimate causes and instead observe facts and discover the laws that connect them.

Q4. Arun says, "People are poor because they are lazy and cannot budget." Identify the type of explanation Arun gives and explain how a sociologist would explain poverty differently. [4 marks]

1. Arun gives a naturalistic and individualistic common sense explanation, which looks for 'natural' reasons in the poor person's character.
2. Such an explanation is unreflective, because it does not ask why the speaker holds this view or whether it is really so.
3. A sociologist would explain contemporary poverty as caused by the structure of inequality in class society.
4. Poverty is experienced by those who suffer from chronic irregularity of work and low wages, so it is a public issue of social structure, not just a personal trouble.

Q5. Distinguish between sociology and history. Give four points. [4 marks]

1. Historians almost as a rule study the past, while sociologists are more interested in the contemporary or recent past.
2. Historians earlier described how events actually happened, while sociology sought to establish causal relationships.
3. History studies concrete details, while sociology abstracts from concrete reality, categorises and generalises.
4. Conventional history focused on kings and war, while sociology focused on less glamorous changes such as land relations and gender relations within the family; today social history brings the two closer.

Q6. Discuss Herbert Spencer's contribution to sociology with reference to Social Darwinism and the organic analogy. [7 marks]

1. Spencer saw evolution as a universal process in which societies move from simple to complex and from homogeneous to heterogeneous forms.
2. Growth brings differentiation, in which parts become specialised, and integration, in which these parts are co-ordinated with each other.
3. Spencer coined the phrase "survival of the fittest", and applying natural selection to societies came to be called Social Darwinism.
4. On this view, competition allows the fittest to survive, so Spencer opposed state measures such as poor relief; critics say the idea was used to justify inequality and western domination.
5. Through the organic analogy, Spencer compared society to a living organism: both grow in size and complexity, and both have interdependent, specialised parts.
6. He identified a sustaining system (production), a distributing system (transport and trade) and a regulating system (government) in society, like the systems of a body.
7. He also noted differences: an organism's parts are physically joined and its consciousness is concentrated in the brain, while society's members are dispersed, consciousness is spread among all, and society exists for the good of its members.

Q7. Explain Max Weber's interpretive sociology with reference to the types of authority and bureaucracy. [7 marks]

1. Weber argued that sociology must understand the meanings people attach to their actions, using the method of Verstehen, or interpretive understanding.
2. He defined authority as power accepted as legitimate, as distinct from power, the ability to impose one's will even against resistance.
3. Traditional authority rests on custom and the sanctity of long-established practice, as with a hereditary chief or king.
4. Charismatic authority rests on followers' belief in a leader's extraordinary personal qualities; it is unstable and tends to become routinised.
5. Rational-legal authority rests on impersonal rules made by legal procedure, so people obey the office rather than the person.
6. Bureaucracy is the purest form of rational-legal authority, with fixed official duties, a hierarchy of offices and work based on written files.
7. Its officials are trained experts appointed on qualifications, paid a salary, and expected to apply rules impersonally to everyone.

Q8. "Conflict, not harmony, is the motor of history." Discuss this view with reference to Karl Marx's ideas of class and class struggle. [7 marks]

1. Marx is associated with the conflict perspective, which sees society as marked by struggle between groups with unequal access to resources.
2. He held that the economic base, the way a society produces its material life, shapes its law, politics, religion and ideas.
3. A class is a group sharing the same relationship to the means of production; in capitalism the bourgeoisie own them and the proletariat sell their labour for wages.
4. Workers produce more value than they are paid, and owners keep this surplus value as profit, which Marx called exploitation.
5. With Engels, Marx argued in The Communist Manifesto that the history of all existing society is the history of class struggles, such as master against slave or lord against serf.
6. History moves through stages: primitive communism, ancient slave society, feudalism and capitalism, each ended by the conflict of its classes.
7. When workers become a class for itself, conscious and organised, Marx expected them to overthrow capitalism and build a classless society; so conflict, in his view, drives change.

Key takeaways

• Sociology is the study of human social life, groups and societies; social anthropology traditionally studied simple, non-western societies as wholes through long fieldwork.
• The sociological imagination links personal troubles to public issues of social structure, as with choosing subjects, homelessness or unemployment.
• Sociology was born from Enlightenment reason, evolutionary ideas, the Industrial Revolution and capitalism in 18th and 19th century Europe.
• Formal teaching of sociology in India began in 1919 at Bombay, and in India sociology and social anthropology have no rigid divide.
• Comte's positivism and law of three stages, and Spencer's evolution, Social Darwinism and organic analogy, shaped sociology as a science of society.
• Durkheim explained social cohesion through the division of labour, mechanical and organic solidarity, and religion's split between sacred and profane.
• Weber's interpretive sociology studied meaningful social action, three types of legitimate authority and bureaucracy as rational-legal organisation.
• Marx defined classes by their relation to the means of production and saw class struggle as the driving force of historical change.
• Sociology overlaps with economics, political science, history, psychology, anthropology and philosophy, but studies all institutions as an interconnected whole.

Test yourself

What did C. Wright Mills mean by the sociological imagination?

It is the ability to grasp history and biography and the relations between them, distinguishing personal troubles of the milieu from public issues of social structure.

Which European intellectual movement emphasised reason and individualism?

The Enlightenment, a European intellectual movement of the late 17th and 18th centuries.

Name the three stages in Comte's law of three stages.

The theological stage, the metaphysical stage and the positive or scientific stage.

Which phrase did Herbert Spencer coin?

"Survival of the fittest", the idea at the heart of what came to be called Social Darwinism.

What kind of law goes with organic solidarity?

Restitutive law, such as contract law, which aims to restore relations rather than punish, unlike the repressive law of mechanical solidarity.

What are Weber's three types of authority?

Traditional authority, charismatic authority and rational-legal authority, classified by the source of their legitimacy.

Who are the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in Marx's theory?

The bourgeoisie own the means of production in capitalism; the proletariat own nothing but their labour, which they sell for wages.

How did social anthropology traditionally differ in method from sociology?

Social anthropology used long fieldwork, living in the community and ethnographic methods, while sociologists often relied on surveys, questionnaires and statistics.