Sociological Imagination: How to Gain Wisdom about the Society in which We All Participate and for Whose Future We Are All Responsible (Part 4)

Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form.

Toni Morrison

Sociology: an Introduction

(Part D)

 by

 Charles Lamson

The Rise of Modern Sociology

We credit the European social thinkers and philosophers with creating sociology, but nowhere did the new science find more fertile ground for development than in North America. By the beginning of the 20th century, sociology was rapidly acquiring new adherents in the United States and Canada, partly because of the influence of European sociologists like Marx and Durkheim, but even more because of the rapid social changes occurring in North America at the time. Waves of immigrants to cities and towns, the explosive growth of population and industry in the cities, race riots, strikes and labor strife, moral crusades against crime and vice and alcohol, the demand for woman suffrage---these and many other changes caused American sociology to take a new turn. There was an increasing demand for knowledge about exactly what changes were occurring and who was affected by them. In North America, therefore, sociologists began to emphasize the quest for facts about changing social conditions that is, the empirical investigation of social issues.

Empirical information refers to carefully gathered, unbiased data regarding social conditions and behavior. In general, modern sociology is distinguished by its relentless and systematic search for empirical data to answer questions about society. Journalists, for example, also seek the facts about social conditions, but they must cover many different events and situations and present them as "stories" that will attract their readers' interest. Because they usually cannot dwell on one subject very long, journalists often must content themselves with citing examples and quoting experts whose opinions may or may not be based on empirical evidence. In contrast, sociologists study a situation or phenomenon in more depth. And when they do not have enough facts they are likely to say, "That is an empirical question. Let's see what the research tells us, and if the answers are inconclusive we'll do more research." Evidence based on measurable effects and outcomes is required before one can make an informed decision about an issue. 

To use the sociological imagination to ask relevant questions and to seek answers to those questions backed by evidence that can be verified by others are among the chief goals of modern sociology. Anyone can make assertions about society or about why people behave the way they do. "I think it's human nature to act selfishly, no matter what kind of education people have" is a common assertion that is not backed up by any solid evidence. As you read this ongoing series of blog posts you will learn that to strengthen your sociological imagination you must learn how to apply evidence to your views and admit that your opinions can be modified by that evidence.

The Social Surveys The empirical focus of American sociology began largely as an outgrowth of the reform movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries during this period. The nation had not yet recovered from the havoc created by the Civil War. Southern blacks were migrating to the more industrialized North in ever increasing numbers, and at the same time millions of European immigrants were finding ill-paying jobs in the larger cities, where cheap labor was in great demand. By the turn of the 20th century, therefore, the nation's cities were crowded with poor families for whom the promise of gold in America had become a tarnished dream. In this time of rapid social change, Americans continually debated the merits of social reform and proposed new solutions for pressing social issues. Some called for socialism, others for a return to the free market, or a ban on labor organizations, or an end to immigration, or the removal of black Americans to Africa. But where would the facts to be used in judging those ideas come from?

In order to gain empirical information about social conditions, dedicated individuals undertook numerous "social surveys." Jacob Riis's (1890) account of life on New York's Lower East Side; W.E.B. Dubois's (1967/1899) survey of Philadelphia blacks; Emily Balch's 1910 depiction of living conditions among Slavic miners and steelworkers in the Pittsburgh area; and Jane Addams's famous Whole House Maps and Papers (1895), which described the lives of her neighbors in Chicago's West Side slum area---these and other carefully documented surveys of the living conditions of people experiencing the effects of rapid industrialization and urbanization left an enduring mark on American sociology. Du Bois, the first black sociologist to gain worldwide recognition, helped direct sociological research to racial and social issues in minority communities using empirical data to provide an objective account of the dismal social conditions of northern blacks in the turn of the century.

W.E.B. Du Bois.

The Chicago School and Human Ecology By the late 1920s the United States had become the world leader in sociology. The two great centers of American sociological research were the University of Chicago and Columbia University. At these universities and others influenced by them, two distinct approaches to the study of society evolved. The Chicago School emphasized the relationship between the individual and society, whereas the major East Coast universities, which were more strongly influenced by European sociology, tended toward macro level analysis of social structure and change.

The sociology department at the University of Chicago (the oldest in the nation) extended its influence to many other universities, especially in the Midwest, South, and West. At that time the department was under the leadership of Robert Park and his younger colleague Ernest Burgess. Park in particular is associated with the Chicago School. His main contribution was to develop an agenda for sociological research that use the city as a "social laboratory." Park favored an approach in which facts concerning what was actually occurring among people and their local communities at the micro and and middle levels would be collected within a broader theoretical framework. That framework attempted to link macro-level changes in society, such as industrialization and the growth of urban populations, to patterns of settlement and cities and to how people actually lived in cities. 

In one of his essays on this subject, Park began the with the idea that industrialization causes the breakdown of traditional "primary group" attachments (those of family members, age-mates, or clans). after stating the probable relationship between the effects of industrialization and high rates of crime, Park asked several specific questions:

What is the effect of ownership of property on truancy, on divorce, and on crime? In what regions and classes are certain kinds of crime endemic? In what classes does divorce occur most frequently? What is the difference in this respect between farmers and, say actors?

To what extent in any given ethnic group do parents and children live in the same world, speak the same language, and share the same ideas, and how far do the conditions found account for juvenile delinquency in that particular group?

This set of research questions, of which those quoted here are a small sample, inspired and shaped the work of hundreds of sociologists who were influenced by The Chicago School. To this day Chicago remains the most systemically studied city in the United States, although similar research has been carried out in other large cities throughout the nation. From studies of the linguistic diversity of African peoples to attempts to understand the subtle negotiations by which youth gangs divide up an urban "turf," the insights of The Chicago School remain a vital aspect of contemporary sociology.

As you can see from the types of questions Park asked, the distinctive orientation of the Chicago School was its emphasis on the relationships among social order, social disorganization, and the distribution of populations in space and time. Park and `Burgess called this approach human ecology. With many modifications, it remains an important, though not dominant, perspective in contemporary sociology.

Human ecology, as Park and others defined it, is the branch of sociology that is concerned with population growth and change. In particular, it seeks to discover how populations organize themselves to survive and prosper. Human ecologists are interested in how groups that are organized in different ways compete and cooperate. They also look for forms of social organization that may emerge as a group adjusts to life in new surroundings.

A key concept for human ecologists is community. There are many ways of defining this term, just as there are many ways of defining most of essential concepts sociology. From an ecological perspective, however, the term community usually refers to a population that carries out major life functions (e.g., birth, marriage, death) within a particular territory. Human ecology does not assume that there will ever be a steady state or an end to the process of change and human communities. Instead, it attempts to trace the change and document its consequences for the social environment. What happens when newcomers "invade" a community? In what way are local gangs a response to recent changes in population or in the ability of members of a community to compete for jobs? Not only do populations change, but people's preferences and behaviors also continually change. So do the technologies for producing the goods and services we want. As a result, our ways of making a living, our modes of transportation, and our choice of leisure activities create constant change, not just in communities but in entire societies. 

The Chicago School became known for this ecological approach, the idea that the study of human society should begin with empirical questions about population size, the distribution of population over territories and the like. The human ecologists recognized that society is shaped by many other processes, but their most important contribution to the discipline of sociology was to include the processes by which populations change and communities are formed.

Modern ecological theories also consider the relations between humans and their natural environment. We will see that the way people earn a living, the resources they use, the energy they consume, and their efforts to control pollution all have far-reaching consequences not only for their own lives but also for the society in which they live. These patterns of use and consumption also have an increasing impact on the entire planet---so much so that ecological problems are becoming an evermore important area of sociological research.

*SOURCE: SOCIOLOGY IN A CHANGING WORLD, 6TH ED., 2003, WILLIAM KORNBLUM, PP. 10-13*

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Sociological Imagination: How to Gain Wisdom about the Society in which We All Participate and for Whose Future We Are All Responsible (Part 3)

I was a sociology major. And it had nothing to do necessarily with law, which is ultimately - I went to law school. But what I tried to do was choose something that I was passionate about or something that I cared about.

Michelle Obama

Sociology: An Introduction

(Part C)

by

 Charles Lamson

 From Social Thought to Social Science

Like all sciences, sociology developed out of pre-scientific longings to understand and predict. Essential questions of sociology have been pondered by the world's great thinkers since the earliest periods of recorded history. The ancient Greek philosophers believed that human societies inevitably arose, flourished, and declined. They tended to perceive the past as better than the present looking back to a "golden age" in which social conditions were presumed to have been better than those of the degraded present. Before the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, the theologians and philosophers of medieval Europe and the Islamic world also believed that human misery and strife were inevitable. As the Bible put it, "The poor always ye have with you." Mere mortals could do little to correct social conditions, which were viewed as the work of divine Providence.

The Age of Enlightenment

The roots of modern sociology can be found in the work of the philosophers and scientists of the Great Enlightenment, which had its origins in the scientific discoveries of the 17th century. That pivotal century began with Galileo's heretical proof that the Earth was not the center of the universe; it ended with the publication of Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica. Newton is often credited with the founding of modern science. He not only discovered the laws of gravity and motion but, in developing the calculus, also provided later generations with the mathematical tools whereby further discoveries in all the sciences could be made. 

Hard on the heels a both of this unprecedented progress in science and mathematics came a theory of human progress that paved the way for a science of humanity. Francis Bacon in England, Rene Descartes and Blaise Pascal in France, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in Germany were among the philosophers who recognized the social importance of scientific discoveries. Their writings emphasized the idea of progress guided by human reason and opposed the dominant action notion that the human condition was ordained by God and could not be improved through human actions.

Today we are used to inventions crowding one upon another. Between the childhood of our grandparents and our own adulthood, society has undergone some major transformations: from agrarian to industrial production; from rural settlements and small towns to large cities and expanding metropolitan regions; from reliance on wood and coal as energy sources to dependence on electricity and nuclear power; from typewriters to computers. But in the 17th century people were used to far more stability. Ways of life that had existed since the Middle Ages were not expected to change in a generation.

The rise of science transformed the social order. New methods of navigation made it possible to explore and chart the world's oceans and continents. Applied to warfare, scientific knowledge enabled Europeans to conquer the people of Africa, Asia, and the Western Hemisphere. In Europe, those conquests opened up new markets and stimulated new patterns of trade that hastened the growth of some regions and cities and the decline of others. The entire human world had entered a period of rapid social change that continues today and shows no signs of ending.

The Age of Revolution

The vehicle of social change was not science itself since relatively few people at any level of society were practicing scientists. Rather, the modern era of rapid social change is a product of the many new ideas that captured people's imagination during the 18th century. The series of revolutions that took place in the American colonies, and France, and in England all resulted in part from social movements unleashed by the Triumph of science and reason. The idea of human rights (that is, the rights of all humans, not just the elite), of democracy versus rule by an absolute monarch, of self-government for colonial peoples, and of applying reason and science to human affairs in general---all are currents of thought that arose during this period. 

The revolutions of the 18th century loosed a torrent of questions that could not even have been imagined before. The old order of society was breaking down as secular knowledge replaced sacred traditions. The study of laws and lawmaking and debates about justice and society began to replace the idea that kings and other leaders had a divine right to rule. Communities were breaking apart; courts and palaces and great estates were crumbling as people struggled to be free. What would replace them? Would the rule of the mob replaced the rule of the monarch? Would greed and envy replace piety and faith? Would there be enough opportunities in the New World for all the people who were being driven off the land in the old world? Would the factory system become the new order of society, and if so, what did that imply for the future of society?

No longer could the scriptures or the classics of ancient Greece and Rome be consulted for easy answers to such questions. Rather, it was becoming evident that new answers could be discovered through the scientific method: repeated observation, careful description, the formulation of theories based on possible explanations, and the gathering of additional data about questions arising from those theories. Why not use the same methods to create a science of human society? This ambitious idea led to the birth of sociology. It is little wonder that the French philosopher Auguste Comte thought of sociology, even in its infancy, as the "queen of sciences," one that would soon take its rightful place beside the reigning science of physics. It was he who coined the term sociology to designate the scientific study of society. Comte believed that the study of social stability and social change was the most important subject for sociology to tackle. He made some of the earliest attempts to apply scientific methods to the study of social life. 

The Founders of Sociology

In the 19th century an increasing number of philosophers and historians began to see themselves as specializing in the study of social conditions and social change. They attempted to develop global theories of social change based on the essential qualities of societies at different stages of human history, and they devoted much of their attention to comparing existing societies and civilizations, both past and present.

The early sociologists tend to think in macro sociological terms. Their writing dealt with whole societies and how their special characteristics influence human behavior and social change. Most sociologists would agree that the 19th century social theorists who had the greatest and most lasting influence on the field were Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber. All three applied the new concepts of sociology to gain an understanding of the immense changes occurring around them.

German-born Karl Marx (1818-1883) became a radical philosopher as a young man and was embroiled in numerous insurrections and attempts at Revolution in Germany and France. Forced to flee Germany after the abortive European revolution of 1848, he lived work and worked in England for the rest of his life. Often penniless, Marx worked for hours on end in the library of the British museum, there he developed the social and economic theories that would have a major influence on sociological thought. His famous treatise Capital is a detailed study of the rise of capitalism as the dominant system of production. In this work and elsewhere, Marx set forth an extremely powerful theory to explain the transformations taking place as societies became more industrialized and urbanized. He argued that those transformations would inevitably end in a revolution in which the workers would overthrow capitalism, but he also believed that revolution could be hastened through political action.

Karl Marx.

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) was the founder of scientific sociology in France. His books, among which the best known are The Division of Labor in Society, Rules of the Sociological Method, and Suicide were pioneering examples of the use of comparative data to assess the directions and consequences of social change. The first university professor with a chair in the social sciences, Durkheim was soon surrounded by a brilliant group of academic disciples who were deeply interested in understanding the vast changes that occurred in societies as they became more populous, more urbanized, and more technologically complex. in 1898 Durkheim and his colleagues established the first scientific journal in sociology, The Sociological Year. This journal and much of Durkheim's own writing were among the first examples of the application of statistics to social issues.

Emile Durkheim.

Max Weber (1864-1920) was a German historian, economist, and sociologist. Weber's life, like Durkheim's spanned much of the second half of the 19th century and the early decades of the twentieth. Like the other early sociologists, therefore, Weber witnessed the tumultuous changes that were bringing down the old order. He saw a monarchies tottering in the face of demands for democratic rule. He observed new industries and markets spanning the globe and linking formerly isolated peoples. He saw and described the rise of modern science and jurisprudence and modern ways of doing business. The growing tendency to apply rational decision-making procedures, rather than merely relying on traditions, was for Weber a dramatic departure from the older ways of feudal societies and mercantile aristocracies. Weber compared many different societies to show a How new forms of government and administration were evolving.

Max Weber.

All three of these pioneers in sociology were scholars of great genius. They were also political activists. Marx, of course, was the most revolutionary of the time and devoted much of his energy to the international socialist movement. Durkheim was a lifelong socialist but was more moderate than Marx. Although he took stands on more political issues, he did not devote himself to political activities. As a young man, Weber had been involved in the movement to create a unified German nation, but as a mature scholar he developed a belief in "value-free" social science. A social scientist might draw research questions from personal political beliefs, but the research itself must apply scientific methods. This view, which Durkheim also shared, did much to advance sociology to the level of a social science rather than just a branch of philosophy.

To become a science, sociology had to build on the research of its founders. The 20th century brought changes of such magnitude at every level of society that sociologists where in increasing demand. That mission was to gain new information about the scope and meaning of social change. 

*SOURCE: SOCIOLOGY IN A CHANGING WORLD, 6TH ED., 2003, WILLIAM KORNBLUM, PP. 7-10*

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