THE COMPARATIVE METHOD

• Sociology as a social science faces challenges in developing its own method of study due to the complexity and multifaceted nature of man’s social life.
• It is a challenging task for sociologists to collect, analyse, synthesise, and generalise social data, which is numerous, complex, and illusive.
• Sociologists employ various methods in their study to collect and interpret social data, and one such method is the comparative method.
• The comparative method refers to comparing different societies or groups within the same society to understand similarities and differences.
• This method is not exclusive to sociology but is used across sciences, originating in logic and applied by philologists in the 18th century to study languages.
• In the 19th century, social investigators used the comparative method to find similarities in social institutions, tracing their common origins.
• Montesquieu and Comte were key figures in using and recommending this method to explain differences and similarities between societies.
• In Durkheim’s work “The Rules of Sociological Method”, he emphasized the importance of the comparative method for establishing causal connections, which are difficult to establish directly in sociology due to the lack of experiments.
• Durkheim used the comparative method in his study of legal systems and the division of labour to show how changes in labour division affected social integration and solidarity.
• In his study of suicide, Durkheim compared suicide rates in different social groups to examine the relationship between suicide rates and the degree of social cohesion and stability of moral norms.
• Tylor used the comparative method to study family institutions among primitive people, showing how practices like mother-in-law avoidance were linked to matrilocal residence.
• Recent studies, such as by S.M. Lipset and R. Bendix, used this method to compare social mobility rates in industrial societies, finding that these rates were influenced by the stage of industrialisation.
• The comparative method helps explain customs or practices across societies, understanding the motives behind them despite cultural differences.
• It allows sociologists to establish correlations between phenomena such as crime and urbanisation, family size and social mobility, social class and educational attainment, and urban living and divorce or delinquency rates.
• The comparative method has limitations, as similar institutions across societies may differ significantly, and detaching an institution from its societal context can lead to misunderstandings.
• Critics suggest minimizing these difficulties by limiting comparisons to societies that are broadly similar.
• Despite these challenges, the comparative method is widely used in sociological studies, with scholars like E.A. Freeman claiming that it is the greatest intellectual achievement of our time.
• Durkheim argued that in the absence of experimental methods, the comparative method is the only method available for sociological disciplines.
• The success of the comparative method in small-scale studies has encouraged sociologists to apply it to larger-scale comparisons between societies and nations to verify conclusions drawn from smaller studies.

THE HISTORICAL METHOD

• The historical method in sociology involves studying events, processes, and institutions of past civilizations to understand the origins of contemporary social life and its nature and functioning.
• This method is based on the idea that present social forms, including customs, traditions, beliefs, values, and ways of living, have roots in the past, and tracing these origins helps explain their current form.
• Historical sociology is a field of sociology focused on studying societies of the past to uncover the origins and explanations for present ways of life.
• All sociological research can be considered historical, as it relies on records of events or observations from the past, but “historical sociology” specifically applies to social facts older than fifty years, typically those from the 19th and early 20th centuries.
• Historical sociology involves comparative study of social groups, their compositions, interrelationships, and the social conditions that support or undermine them.
• Social anthropologists study these aspects in contemporary societies, while historical sociologists examine them in the records of past societies and cultures.
• The historical approach in sociology has two main forms: (1) the biological theory of evolution approach, and (2) the economic interpretation approach.
• The first approach focuses on the origins, development, and transformation of societies and social institutions throughout human history. Scholars like Comte, Spencer, and Hobhouse used this approach to study the development of society.
• E. Westermarck and F. Oppenheimer applied this method to study specific institutions like marriage and the state in their works “History of Human Marriage” and “The State,” respectively.
• The second approach is characterized by the economic interpretation of history, which was notably advocated by Max Weber. He criticized Marx’s materialist conception of history and its causal explanations.
• Weber’s approach focuses on understanding historical changes in social structures, such as the origins of capitalism, the development of modern bureaucracy, and the economic influence of world religions.
• C. Wright Mills and Raymond Aron have also been influenced by Weber’s methodology in their studies of social change.