• The modern world is an iron cage of rational systems from which there is no escape.

• Capitalism tends to sow the seeds of its own destruction.

• The modern world has less moral cohesion than earlier societies had.

• The city spawns a particular type of personality.

• In their social lives, people tend to put on a variety of theatrical performances.

• The social world is defined by principles of reciprocity in give-and-take relationships.

• People create the social worlds that ultimately come to enslave them.

• People always retain the capacity to change the social worlds that constrain them.

• Society is an integrated system of social structures and functions.

• Society is a “juggernaut” with the ever-present possibility of running amok.

• Although it appears that the Western world has undergone a process of liberalization, in fact it has grown increasingly oppressive.

• The world has entered a new postmodern era increasingly defined by the inauthentic, the fake, by simulations of reality.

• Paradoxically, globalization is associated with the worldwide spread of “nothing.”

• Nonhuman objects are increasingly seen as key actors in networks.

• This book aims to help readers understand these theoretical ideas and the larger theories they come from.

Introduction

• Presenting a history of sociological theory is an important task but only two chapters (1 and 6) are devoted to it, offering a highly selective historical sketch.

• The aim is to provide readers with a scaffolding to place later detailed discussions of theorists and theories in a larger context.

• It is useful to return to these overview chapters and to glance back at Figures 1.1 and 6.1, which are schematic representations of the histories covered.

• The theories in this book have a wide range of application, deal with centrally important social issues, and have stood the test of time—these form the author’s definition of sociological theory.

• Some theorists briefly discussed in Chapter 1 (e.g., Herbert Spencer, Auguste Comte) will not receive detailed treatment later as they are of mostly historical interest.

• Other theorists (e.g., Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim) will be discussed in Chapter 1 in historical context and receive detailed treatment later due to their continuing importance.

• The focus is on important theoretical work by sociologists or individuals in other fields whose work is now important in sociology.

• This book covers the “big ideas” in sociology that have stood the test of time or show promise, dealing with major social issues and having far-reaching scope.

• The precise date when sociological theory began cannot be established; people have developed theories of social life since early history.

• The book does not cover early historic times like the Greeks, Romans, or the Middle Ages, nor the seventeenth century, despite some traces of sociological thought (e.g., James Harrington, mid-1600s).

• The reason is that earlier epochs produced few ideas relevant to modern sociology, and thinkers from those times did not consider themselves, nor are widely considered now, as sociologists.

• An exception is noted in the biographical sketch of Ibn-Khaldun.

• It is only in the 1800s that thinkers can be clearly identified as classical sociological thinkers.

• These classical thinkers and the social and intellectual forces that shaped their ideas are the main focus.

• For debates on what makes theory classical, see works by Camic (1997), R. Collins (1997b), and Connell (1997).

ABDEL RAHMAN IBN-KHALDUN

A Biographical Sketch

• Sociology is often seen as a modern, Western phenomenon, but sociological ideas have long been developed in other parts of the world.

• Abdel Rahman Ibn-Khaldun is a key example of an early sociological thinker from outside the West.

• Ibn-Khaldun was born in Tunis, North Africa, on May 27, 1332 to an educated family.

• He was educated in the Koran, mathematics, and history.

• During his life, he served as ambassador, chamberlain, and member of scholars’ council for various sultans in Tunis, Morocco, Spain, and Algeria.

• He spent two years in prison in Morocco due to his belief that state rulers were not divine leaders.

• After about two decades of political activity, he returned to North Africa for an intensive five-year period of study and writing.

• His works from this period increased his fame and earned him a lectureship at Al-Azhar Mosque University in Cairo, a center of Islamic study.

• In his lectures, Ibn-Khaldun emphasized the importance of linking sociological thought with historical observation.

• By his death in 1406, he had produced a corpus of work sharing many ideas with contemporary sociology.

• He was committed to the scientific study of society, empirical research, and searching for the causes of social phenomena.

• Ibn-Khaldun focused on various social institutions like politics and the economy and their interrelationships.

• He was interested in comparing primitive and modern societies.

• Although he did not have a dramatic impact on classical sociology, renewed interest by general and Islamic scholars may elevate his historical significance.

Social Forces in the Development of Sociological Theory

Political Revolutions

• All intellectual fields are profoundly shaped by their social settings, especially sociology, which is both derived from and studies the social setting as its basic subject.

• Focus is on key social conditions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that significantly influenced the development of sociology.

• Introduction of major figures in the history of sociological theory begins here.

• The political revolutions starting with the French Revolution (1789) and continuing through the nineteenth century were the most immediate factor in the rise of sociological theorizing.

• These revolutions had an enormous impact and led to many positive changes, but early theorists were more concerned with the negative effects, especially chaos and disorder.

• The resulting social disorder in countries like France deeply disturbed early theorists.

• Early thinkers shared a desire to restore order to society.

• Some extreme thinkers wished for a return to the peaceful, orderly days of the Middle Ages, but this was recognized as impossible by more sophisticated thinkers.

• Instead, theorists sought to find new bases of social order in societies disrupted by the political revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

• The concern with social order was a major focus for classical sociological theorists such as Auguste Comte, Emile Durkheim, and Talcott Parsons.

The Industrial Revolution and the Rise of Capitalism

• The Industrial Revolution was at least as important as the political revolution in shaping sociological theory.

• It occurred mainly in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries across many Western societies.

• The Industrial Revolution was a series of interrelated developments transforming the West from an agricultural to an overwhelmingly industrial system.

• Large numbers of people moved from farms and agricultural work to industrial occupations in growing factories.

• Factories were transformed by a series of technological improvements.

• Large economic bureaucracies emerged to provide services needed by industry and the capitalist economic system.

• The ideal within this system was a free marketplace for exchanging industrial products.

• A few profited greatly, while the majority worked long hours for low wages.

• A reaction against the industrial system and capitalism gave rise to the labor movement and various radical movements aimed at overthrowing capitalism.

• The Industrial Revolution, capitalism, and the reactions to them caused an enormous upheaval in Western society, deeply affecting sociologists.

• Four major early sociological theorists—Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, and Georg Simmel—focused on these changes and societal problems.

• These thinkers dedicated their lives to studying the problems and often sought to develop programs to help solve them.

The Rise of Socialism

• A set of changes aimed at addressing the excesses of the industrial system and capitalism is grouped under the term “socialism.”

• Some sociologists favored socialism as a solution to industrial problems, but most were personally and intellectually opposed to it.

• Karl Marx was an active supporter of overthrowing capitalism and replacing it with a socialist system.

• Marx did not develop a full theory of socialism but spent much time criticizing capitalist society and engaged in political activities to promote socialist societies.

• Marx was atypical among early sociological theorists.

• Most early theorists like Max Weber and Emile Durkheim opposed socialism as envisioned by Marx.

• While recognizing problems in capitalism, they sought social reform within capitalism rather than a social revolution.

• These theorists feared socialism more than capitalism.

• This fear significantly influenced the development of sociological theory more than Marx’s support for socialism.

• Often, sociological theory developed in reaction against Marxian and broadly socialist theory.

Feminism

• A feminist perspective has always existed wherever women are subordinated, and women have consistently recognized and protested this situation.

• Precursors to feminism trace back to the 1630s, with major waves of feminist activity during key liberationist moments in modern Western history.

• Early feminist activity surged during the 1780s and 1790s around the American and French revolutions.

• A more organized feminist effort occurred in the 1850s linked to the mobilization against slavery and for political rights for the middle class.

• The early twentieth century, especially the Progressive Era in the U.S., saw massive mobilization for women’s suffrage and industrial and civic reform legislation.

• These feminist movements influenced the development of sociology, notably through the work of women such as Harriet Martineau, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, Anna Julia Cooper, Ida Wells-Barnett, Marianne Weber, and Beatrice Potter Webb.

• Over time, the contributions of these women were pushed to the periphery, annexed, discounted, or written out of sociology’s public record by men organizing sociology as a professional power base.

• Feminist concerns entered sociology only on the margins, through marginal male theorists or increasingly marginalized female theorists.

• Male central figures in sociology—from Spencer through Weber and Durkheim—responded to feminist arguments with basically conservative stances.

• Gender issues were treated as inconsequential topics and responded to conventionally rather than critically by these male theorists.

• This happened even as women were producing a significant body of sociological theory.

• The history of gender politics in sociology, reflecting male responses to feminist claims, is only now being written.

Urbanization

• The Industrial Revolution caused large-scale migration of people from rural homes to urban settings in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

• This migration was largely driven by jobs created by the industrial system in cities.

• People faced many difficulties adjusting to urban life.

• The rapid expansion of cities brought numerous urban problems such as overcrowding, pollution, noise, and traffic.

• The nature of urban life and its problems attracted the attention of early sociologists, especially Max Weber and Georg Simmel.

• The Chicago school, the first major school of American sociology, was largely defined by its focus on the city and its use of Chicago as a laboratory to study urbanization and related problems.

Religious Change

• Social changes from political revolutions, the Industrial Revolution, and urbanization profoundly affected religiosity.

• Many early sociologists came from religious backgrounds and were actively or professionally involved in religion.

• They brought their religious objectives into sociology, aiming to improve people’s lives.

• For some, like Auguste Comte, sociology was transformed into a kind of religion.

• Others produced sociological theories with a clear religious imprint.

• Emile Durkheim wrote one of his major works specifically on religion.

• Morality was a key theme in the work of both Durkheim and Talcott Parsons.

• A significant part of Max Weber’s work focused on the religions of the world.

• Karl Marx was also interested in religiosity but approached it with a much more critical orientation.

The Growth of Science

• During the development of sociological theory, there was a growing emphasis on science in both academia and society.

• The technological products of science were spreading across all areas of life, giving science enormous prestige.

• Successful sciences like physics, biology, and chemistry granted their practitioners honored social status.

• Early sociologists such as Comte, Durkheim, Spencer, Mead, and Schutz were focused on science and aimed to model sociology after the physical and biological sciences.

• A debate arose between those who fully accepted the scientific model and those like Max Weber, who argued that the distinctive nature of social life made complete adoption of the scientific model difficult and unwise.

• The relationship between sociology and science remains a subject of ongoing debate.

• Major sociology journals, especially in the United States, show the predominance of proponents of sociology as a science.