PRINCIPLES OF SOCIOLOGY HRM 115 TOPICS 1-6

TOPIC 1: INTRODUCTION

What is sociology?

It is the study of human behaviour and how the group influences it. It is therefore the study of human behaviour in society. Sociology has a culture; therefore, sociology is the study of human behaviour and how that behaviour is influenced by culture. Giddens (1993:08) defines sociology as the systematic study of human societies, giving special emphasis to modern industrialized societies. Sociology studies industrialised societies with an aim of understanding and predicting the future. The discipline came into being in order to explain the social transformations and upheavals that took place in Europe in the 19th century. Auguste Comte a French philosopher coined the term sociology.

Sociology and other disciplines

Sociology differs from anthropology in that while anthropology studies traditional “other” societies, sociology looks at modern societies. However anthropology helps sociologists in understanding the different forms of human social life that exists.

Sociology is different from history, which looks at the past.

While psychology deals with mental processes and how they influence human behaviour, sociology looks at culture and how it influences human behaviour.

Why study sociology?

Helps us to understand how human behaviour is shaped by the group/society.

Prediction in order to control – sociological research helps us predict how the future will be like and thus gives us the ability to control the future

Helps by providing a means of increasing our cultural sensitivities. In terms of social policy, it helps by enabling policy makers make suitable and culturally appropriate societies

In terms of human resource management sociology helps managers to be able to formulate appropriate policies that are acceptable within certain cultures

Basic concepts in sociology

Culture

According to Taylor (1871 in Cheater 1989:103-123) culture is “that complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, morals, laws, customs and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” This definition can be criticized for being vague because it has been applied to a wide range of phenomena. (It is too broad)

Giddens (1993:08) argues that culture is the way of life of the members of a society or groups within a society. Culture differs in society in that while culture looks at the way of life of a group society looks at the system of interrelationships connecting individuals within a group. However the difference is not really great and the two are connected.

Keesing (1974:80) defines culture as a set of shared meanings and values. Thus culture can be viewed as a cognitive system where it consists of standards for deciding what to do about it and for deciding how to go about doing it

Culture as a resource – culture can be liked to a super market where people pick and choose the things they want. Thus people pick and choose the norms and values to use in everyday life. Men and women use several aspects of culture either to attack others or defend themselves.

Culture as an instrument of domination (Bourdieu 1984)

Maintains that culture plays a major role in maintaining social inequality. Based no their social origins, individuals acquire capacities for interpreting and using culture codes that affect their opportunities to maintain or change their social position. In a patriarchal situation, it is culture that upholds the position of men over women. Cheater (1986:06) goes on to argue that culture can be viewed as a set of ideological percepts that can be mobilized into socio-political interacts.

Culture as a way of life

O’Connor and Downing (1995:03) highlight that culture is the essence of a people’s way of life, e.g. how they dress, their marriage system, religion etc

Culture industries

These include newspapers, books, art, music who maintain/perpetuate a people’s way of life.

The 3 symbols that constitute culture

Peterson (1979:137) argues that norms, values and beliefs are the symbols that constitute culture.

a)Values – these are choice statements that rank behaviour or goals. They are abstract ideals held by members of a given society.

b)Norms – these are more specific than values. They refer to the “dos” and “don’ts” of social life. These are the rules governing social life which people are expected to observe.

c)Beliefs – these are existential statements about how the world operates that often serve to justify norms and values.

Culture therefore refers to the norms, values, beliefs, and material goods created by people in society. Norms can be divided mores, fall ways, taboos etc

What is socialisation?

When children are born into society they are socialized into the way of life of that group. Socialisation is a process of inculcating societies’ norms and values into an individual. Socialisation takes place in two levels, that is, primary and secondary.

Primary socialisation – a process whereby an infant/child acquires the skills/ways of life of a society into which he/she is born. It mainly takes place at home and is done by the parents or family of the young child.

Secondary socialization – this happens in schools, workplaces, universities etc where individuals continually learn to adjust to the demands of society.

Socialization is a life long process that starts from birth and end in the grave or death

Roles

As an individual is socialized into society’s norms and values, he/she learns to take a role. Roles are socially defined expectations that a person in a given status or social position follows. It is the duty one carries out whether at home, in the workplace or at school. For example, my role is to lecture and yours is to be attentive students. Roles are allocated to individuals by society. Where these roles become too many for an individual they can cause role strain/role conflict/role confusion. For example, where one is a student, father, brother, worker, husband, boyfriend, son and an uncle

Status

This refers to a position that one occupies in the society. It is linked to roles in that for one to perform a certain role they have to occupy a certain social position. For example, to be a teacher you have to occupy a certain position.

Topic 3:THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGY

The discipline of sociology can be said to have developed as a result of the following factors;

  1. The enlightenment thinkers
  2. Industrialization
  3. Urbanization
  4. Growth of communism

The enlightenment thinkers: Philosophical foundations

The general arguments pursued by enlightenment thinkers were:

  1. Belief in empiricism – they believed that everything must be empirical, that is, proved through experiments or other methods. It is through empiricism that knowledge is increased. If one said the earth is spherical then one had to prove their claim. Empiricism was an attempt to depart from explaining things using the supernatural “eternal verities” to explain social reality using reason and science.
  2. Papal infallibility – they rejected the view that the pope is infallible/does not sin and argued that everyone responsible for his/her actions. They also rejected the point that the new pope was appointed by God and argued that people had the right elect presidents into office, that is, to remove and install governments into office.

Rousseau and Montesquieu :the 2 thinkers we shall look at

Montesquieu (16988 – 1755)

In his book, Spirit of the laws, he sought laws social and historical development. He argued that social institutes have an interdependent and correlative relationship to one another and are dependant on the form of the whole. Therefore, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Montesquieu studied forms of government such as the republic, aristocracy, monarchy and despotism. He can be credited for being the profounder of the comparative method of social research (where he compared several governments from different societies). He also used the ideal type method that was later adopted by Weber on bureaucracy. On power – Montesqueu argued that power should not be concentrated in the hands of one man but be distributed among individuals and groups of society. He believed that liberty is best preserved where interest groups check on the government and where laws provide for such checks.

His perception of individuals

Montesqueu looked at people not as a multitude of individuals but as a society that could be distinguished from others by its customs and institutions. He can be regarded as one of the founders of the sociology of knowledge. Because e argued that the way individuals perceive customers and ideas of society depends on the social position one occupies and hence on the cultural perspective one adopts (which is the whole essence of the sociology of knowledge)

Rousseau (1712 – 1778)

-“Individuals are born free but are everywhere in chains.” His main objective was to find a social order whose laws were in harmony with fundamental laws of nature. He sought an alternative to the prevailing order, which, to his mind, precluded man’s perfectibility and even deformed and violated his nature. Culture, for Rousseau, is an invention of man and it suppresses man’s freedom. On government – he argued that governments originated in order to protect the property of the rich. Karl Marx later adopted this idea in his study of class struggles.

Why Rousseau is the forerunner of sociology

  1. He was among the first to address himself in a relatively systematic manner to the origins, forms and consequences of inequality in society.
  2. He saw clearly that inequality is the main cause of strife and war within and among societies

On gender

In his writings of Emile and Sophy Rousseau argued that “men should be strong and active while women should be weak and passive.” This view influenced how he looked at education, for example, where he argued that a woman’s education must be planned in relation to man. Women, in as far as he was concerned, existed in order t be pleasing in man’s sight, to win his respect and love. These are the ideas heavily criticized by feminists.

The ideas of E.T led to an uproar among French conservatives who not only regarded them as dangerous but also as leading to the French reverend and the general upheavals that took place in Europe in the 18th century.

The Conservative Reactions de Bonald & de Maistre (French)

These men were disturbed by the ideas of the E.T, which they regarded as destructive. They therefore developed a catholic counter – revolutionary philosophy that called for a restoration of the old order/regime (ancient regime) that had been destroyed by the Rev. of 1789. They yearned for the golden past and tried everything in their will to turn back the hands of the clock.

These philosophers advanced several propositions on how society should operate. It is those propositions that directly influenced Auguste Comte, Durkheim who were the founding fathers of sociology.

Their Propositions were as follows:

  1. They argued that society is greater than the individuals who comprise it. This was a direct attack on the view held by E.T who stated that only individuals exist and that society is simply the name one gives to those individuals in their interrelationships.
  2. Far from individuals constituting society, it is society that crates the individuals by means of moral education or what Durkheim later called social facts.
  3. Every institution in society is positively functional – no institution disrupts or is bad for society. They also argued that institutions are parts of a society, which are interdependent and interrelated.
  4. Importance of religion and rituals – unlike the E.T who viewed religion, rituals, and ceremonies and worship as irrational practices of the past, the C.Rs viewed all these as necessary for the unity of society.

Conclusion

The discipline of sociology developed as a reaction to the ideas of E.Ts. It developed mainly as counter reaction to the enlightenment era. There are; however, some ideas or notions that were adopted by classical sociologists such as Saint Simon and Comte that directly came from Rousseau and Montesqueu.

Urbanisation and industrialisation

Industrialisation greatly changed Europe and its people. The discovery and invention of machines such as the Spinning Jenny, led to the construction of factories and workhouses. This led to changes in the laws enacted e.g. the Corn Laws of England 1832 and the factory laws etc. The enclosure act led to the grabbing of land from peasants thus greatly changing in their lifestyles. Poverty increased and there was need to explain all these in sociological terms. It can be argued then, that sociology as a discipline developed in order to explain, describe and understand the social upheavals that took place in Europe. The social reforms had to be understood and an attempt to predict the future made. This led to the people such as German theorist, Ferdinand Tonnies who described the change from traditional societies into modern societies as the move from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft. It was the move from a community to a society. Durkheim in his book Division of labour and Marx in his Das Kapital depict the changes brought in by the new capitalist system. A social satire was also presented by Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist (where he depicted the effects of the British poor laws of 1834).

The French Revolution of 1789

It is mainly blamed on the E.T. whose ideas are said to have fuelled the Revolution. It culminated in the overthrow of the ancient regime or the Catholic Church rule. This caused much alarm among conservatives who feared the Rev might spread to other countries and topple existing regimes. That is why, such philosophers as Comte and Durkheim were bent on instilling order, progress and social control.

The influence of Auguste Comte (1789 – 1857)

He is credited for coining the word sociology, which to him meant a study in social physics. Comte regarded sociology as the last science to develop but also as the most significant and complex of all sciences. Comte was greatly influenced by Saint Simon and the conservative reactionaries. He regarded sociology as a new religion of which he was the high priest. For Comte sociology was a “positive philosophy” in the sense that it emphasized order, progress and social control. His philosophy is positive in the sense that it opposes the views held which Comte regarded as negative since they had resulted in the French Rev. Comte believed that questioning time-honoured institutions was destructive and threatened to undermine all social life. In terms of gender Comte despised individualism, which he believed was destructive. He was against equality of sexes and he argued that the females or sex is in a state of infancy therefore could not be equated to males. Moreover women knew nothing about issues of state and governance therefore they should not be allowed to talk. He argued that people who do not know anything about a certain topic should keep quiet and leave everything to the intellectuals. If these people were allowed to talk they brought in dangerous ideas that caused social anarchy.

His method of research

Comte emphasized his techniques as observation, experiments and comparative analysis as the best of data collection and analysis. He wanted sociology to be modelled along the lines of natural sciences and he believed that like the natural scientists, sociologists would formulate laws to explain human behaviour.

TOPIC 3: CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGY

SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES

The main theories of sociology are functionalism (S.F. by R.B.), Marxism (Conflict theory) and Symbolic Interactionism/interpretive sociology.

Functionalism – Definition:

It is the analysis of society in terms of function with regards to specific institutions in a particular society. Examples of institutions include the family, church, school, army police etc. Functionalism is not a unified body of knowledge but has several strands to it, which include S.F by R.B, ideas by Parsons, B. Malinowski etc. Giddens (1979) argues that functionalism has often been closely associated with the idea that biology provides the appropriate model for sociology. Functionalists argue that society is like a human body where every organ is functional and works for the good of the whole. This whole is greater than the sum of its parts, that is, the society is sui generis.

Talcott Parsons

He believed that society is a social system and he argued that the central task of sociology is to analyse society as a system. This system has functionally interrelated variables. Parsons (like Durkheim and Comte before him) was preoccupied with maintaining order in the social system. For example during socialism the basic objective is the inculcation of norms and values of the social system. Parsons assumed that individuals are passive during the socialist process and thus he concentrated in analysing how the system controlled the individuals rather than how the individuals acted t create the social system. For Parson institutions performed the following roles:

(a)Adaptation – family or school

(b)Latency/pattern maintenance – prisons, police

(c)Integration – e.g. churches

(d)Goal attainment – e.g. school. University, workplace

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)

Books on suicide

Elementary forms of religious life, D.O.L.