c
   is the study of the social lives of humans, groups and societies.

It concerns itself with

the social rules and processes that bind and separate people not only as individuals, but as
members of associations, groups, and institutions.

Sociology is interested in our behavior as social beings; thus the sociological field of interest
ranges from the analysis of short contacts between anonymous individuals on the street to the
study of global social processes.

 

Sociology is a relatively new scientific discipline among other social sciences including
economics, political science, anthropology, and psychology. It has, however, a long history and
can trace its origins to a mixture of common human knowledge, works of art and philosophy.

Sociology as a scientific discipline emerged in the early 19th century as an academic response
to the challenge of modernity: as the world is becoming smaller and more integrated, people's
experience of the world is increasingly atomized and dispersed. Sociologists hoped not only to
understand what held social groups together, but also to develop an "antidote" to social
disintegration.

Auguste Comte, who coined the term V
  

The term was coined by Auguste Comte in 1838 from Latin V
V (companion, associate) and
Greek   (study of, speech). Comte hoped to unify all studies of humankind--including history,
psychology and economics. His own sociological scheme was typical of the 19th century; he
believed all human life had passed through the same distinct historical stages and that, if one
could grasp this progress, one could prescribe the remedies for social ills.

The first books with term 'sociology' in their title were written in mid-19th century by the English
philosopher Herbert Spencer. The first university department of sociology was created in United
States in 1892 at the University of Chicago by Albion W. Small, who in 1895 founded the
American Journal of Sociology. The first European department of sociology was founded in
1895 at the University of Bordeaux by Emile Durkheim, founder of L'Année Sociologique (1896).
In 1919 a sociology department was established in Germany at the Ludwig Maximilians
University of Munich by Max Weber and in 1920 in Poland by Florian Znaniecki. The first
sociology departments in the United Kingdom were founded after the Second World War.

International cooperation in sociology began in 1893 when Rene Worms founded the small
Institut International de Sociologie, eclipsed by much larger International Sociologist Association
from 1949. In 1905 the American Sociological Association, the world's largest association of
professional sociologists, was founded.

Other "classical" theorists of sociology from the late 19th and early 20th centuries include Karl
Marx, Ferdinand Toennies, Emile Durkheim, Vilfredo Pareto, and Max Weber. In a manner
similar to Comte, none thought of themselves as purely "sociologists". In particular, their works
address religion, education, economics, psychology, ethics, philosophy, and theology. With the
exception of Marx, their most enduring influence has been on sociology, and it is in this field that
their theories are still considered most applicable.
Early sociology studies have considered it to be similar to natural sciences like physics or
biology. Therefore many researchers argued that methods and methodology used in those
sciences are perfectly suited to be used in the study of sociology without any changes. The
positive effects of this attitude, like the use of scientific method and stress on empiricism,
allowed sociology to be distinguished from theology and metaphysics and be recognized as a
true science. Those early views, supported by August Comte, led to methodologies known as
positivism and based on the view of philosophical naturalism.

Even in the 19th century positivism and naturalism have been questioned by scientists like
Wilhelm Dilthey and Heinrich Rickert, who argued that the world of nature is not the same as the
world of society, as human society have unique aspects like meanings, symbols, rules, norms,
values - all that can be described as the culture. This view was further developed by Max
Weber, who introduced the antipositivism, or humanistic sociology. According to this view,
sociology research must concentrate on humans and their cultural values. This has lead to
some controversion on how one can draw the line between subjective and objective research,
and influenced the hermeneutics studies.

Sociology - scientific study of human social behavior. As the study of humans in their collective
aspect, sociology is concerned with all group activities²economic, social, political, and
religious. Sociologists study such areas as bureaucracy, community, deviant behavior, family,
public opinion, social change, social mobility, social stratification, and such specific problems as
crime, divorce, child abuse, and substance addiction. Sociology tries to determine the laws
governing human behavior in social contexts; it is sometimes distinguished as a general social
science from the special social sciences, such as economics and political science, which
confine themselves to a selected group of social facts or relations.

The Evolution of Sociology

A number of Western political theorists and philosophers, including Plato, Polybius, Machiavelli,
Vico, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, have treated political problems in a broader
social context. Thus Montesquieu regarded the political forms of different states as a
consequence of the working of deep underlying climatic, geographic, economic, and
psychological factors. In the 18th cent., Scottish thinkers made inquiries into the nature of
society; scholars like Adam Smith explored the economic causes of social organization and
social change, while Adam Ferguson considered the noneconomic causes of social cohesion.

It was not until the 19th cent., however, when the concept of society was finally separated from
that of the state, that sociology developed into an independent study. The term sociology was
coined (1838) by Auguste Comte. He attempted to analyze all aspects of cultural, political, and
economic life and to identify the unifying principles of society at each stage of human social
development. Herbert Spencer applied the principles of Darwinian evolution to the development
of human society in his popular and controversial Principles of Sociology (1876±96). An
important stimulus to sociological thought came from the work of Karl Marx, who emphasized
the economic basis of the organization of society and its division into classes and saw in the
class struggle the main agent of social progress.

The founders of the modern study of sociology were Émile Durkheim and Max Weber. Durkheim
pioneered in the use of empirical evidence and statistical material in the study of society.
Weber's major contribution was as a theorist, and his generalizations about social organization
and the relation of belief systems, including religion, to social action are still influential. He
developed the use of the ideal type²a working model, based on the selective combination of
certain elements of historical fact or current reality²as a tool of sociological analysis. In the
United States the study of sociology was pioneered and developed by Lester Frank Ward and
William Graham Sumner.

The most important theoretical sociology in the 20th cent. has moved in three directions: conflict
theory, structural-functional theory, and symbolic interaction theory. Conflict theory draws
heavily on the work of Karl Marx and emphasizes the role of conflict in explaining social change;
prominent conflict theorists include Ralf Dahrendorf and C. Wright Mills. Structural-functional
theory, developed by Talcott Parsons and advanced by Robert Merton, assumes that large
social systems are characterized by homeostasis, or "steady states." The theory is now often
called "conservative" in its orientation. Symbolic interaction, begun by George Herbert Mead
and further developed by Herbert Blumer and others, focuses on subjective perceptions or other
symbolic processes of communication.