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Book Name – Understanding Society (Class 11 – NCERT)
What’s Inside the Chapter? (After Subscription)
1. THE CONTEXT OF SOCIOLOGY
1.1. The Enlightenment
1.2. The French Revolution
1.3. The Industrial Revolution
2. CLASS STRUGGLE
3. DURKHEIM’S VISION OF SOCIOLOGY
3.1. Division of Labour in Society
3.2. Max Weber and Interpretive Sociology
3.3. Bureaucracy
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Introducing Western Sociologists
Chapter – 4
Sociology is sometimes called the child of the ‘age of revolution’.
It emerged in 19th century Western Europe following revolutionary changes over the previous three centuries.
Three major revolutions influenced the birth of sociology:
The Enlightenment or Scientific Revolution
The French Revolution
The Industrial Revolution
These revolutions transformed European society and affected the rest of the world through European contact.
The chapter focuses on the key ideas of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber.
These thinkers belong to the classical tradition of sociology and laid the foundation of the subject.
Their ideas remain relevant in contemporary sociology, though they have faced criticism and modification.
Ideas about society are influenced by social conditions, which shaped the emergence of sociology.
THE CONTEXT OF SOCIOLOGY
The modern era in Europe and modernity were shaped by three major processes:
The Enlightenment, or the dawning of the ‘age of reason’
The quest for political sovereignty, exemplified by the French Revolution
The Industrial Revolution, which introduced mass manufacture
These processes have intellectual consequences that influenced modern thought and sociology.
Detailed discussion of these processes is found in Chapter 1 of Introducing Sociology.
The Enlightenment
During the late 17th and 18th centuries, Western Europe witnessed the emergence of radically new ways of thinking called The Enlightenment.
Human beings were established at the centre of the universe.
Rational thought became the central feature of humans, transforming individuals into both producers and users of knowledge, or ‘knowing subjects’.
Only those capable of thinking and reasoning were considered fully human; others, such as natives of primitive societies or ‘savages’, were seen as deficient.
Society, being human-made, was amenable to rational analysis and comprehensible to humans.
Reason displaced nature, religion, and divine acts from the central position in understanding the world.
The Enlightenment fostered attitudes that are today secular, scientific, and humanistic.