history of sociology

History of Sociological and Anthropological Thought
Introduction
-Social thought provides general theories to explain actions and behavior of society as a whole.
-The broad arena of social thought encompasses sociological, political and philosophical ideas.
-Classical social theory has generally been presented from a perspective of Western philosophy; the result is that it has often been seen as very Eurocentric.
-Classical sociological theories are important not only historically, but also because they are living documents with contemporary relevance to both modern theorists and today's social world.
-The work of classical thinkers continues to inspire modern sociologists in a variety of ways.
-Many contemporary thinkers seek to reinterpret the classics to apply them to the contemporary scene.
-When we refer to classical sociological theory we refer to theories of great scope and ambition that either were created in Europe between the early 1800s and the early 1900s or have their roots in the culture of that period.
-The work of such classical sociological theorists as Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Georg Simmel was important in its time and played a central role in the subsequent development of sociology. They have become classics because they have a wide range of application and deal with centrally important social issues.

Theory
Theory is an explanation or model which is based on observation, experimentation, and reasoning, especially one that has been tested and confirmed as a general principle helping to explain and predict phenomena.
Any scientific theory must be based on a careful and rational examination of the facts. A clear distinction needs to be made between facts (things which can be observed and/or measured) and theories (explanations which correlate and interpret the facts).

Classical Greek Thought
The ideas of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle
The Ancient Greek philosophers did not see a distinction between politics and society. The concept of society did not come until much later during the Enlightenment period. The term, société, was probably first used as a key concept by Rousseau in discussion of social relations. By the mid-5th century, it had become more common for advanced thinkers to reject traditional explanations of the world of nature. As a result of the experience of a century of war, religious beliefs declined. Gods and goddesses were no longer held in the same regard as they had been a century earlier. Wars taught that the actions of men and women determine their own destiny. Meanwhile, more traditional notions of right and wrong were called into question.
Greeks used their creative energies to explain experience by recourse to history, tragedy, comedy, art and architecture. But their creative energies were also used to "invent" philosophy, defined as "the love of wisdom." In general, philosophy came into existence when the Greeks discovered their dissatisfaction with supernatural and mythical explanations of reality. Over time, Greek thinkers began to suspect that there was a rational or logical order to the universe.
Forces that led to the rise of Sociology
Social Forces in the Development of Sociological Theory
The social conditions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were of the utmost significance to the development of sociology.
1.) The chaos and social disorder that resulted from the series of political revolutions ushered in by the French Revolution in 1789 disturbed many early social theorists. While they recognized that a return to the old order was impossible, they sought to find new sources of order in societies that had been traumatized by dramatic political changes.
2.) The Industrial Revolution was a set of developments that transformed Western societies from largely agricultural to overwhelmingly industrial systems. Peasants left agricultural work for industrial occupations in factories. Within this new system, a few profited greatly while the majority worked long hours for low wages. A reaction against the industrial system and capitalism led to the labor movement and other radical movements dedicated to overthrowing the capitalist system. As a result of the Industrial Revolution, large numbers of people moved to urban settings. The expansion of cities produced a long list of urban problems that attracted the attention of early sociologists.
3.) Socialism emerged as an alternative vision of a worker's paradise in which wealth was equitably distributed. Karl Marx was highly critical of capitalist society in his writings and engaged in political activities to help engineer its fall. Other early theorists recognized the problems of capitalist society but sought change through reform because they feared socialism more than they feared capitalism.
4.) Feminists were especially active during the French and American Revolutions. However feminist concerns filtered into early sociology only on the margins. In spite of their marginal status, early women sociologists like Harriet Martineau and Marianne Weber wrote a significant body of theory that is being rediscovered today.
All of these changes had a profound effect on religiosity. Many sociologists came from religious backgrounds and sought to understand the place of religion and morality in modern society.
Throughout this period, the technological products of science were permeating every sector of life, and science was acquiring enormous prestige. An ongoing debate developed between sociologists who sought to model their discipline after the hard sciences and those who thought the distinctive characteristics of social life made a scientific sociology problematic and unwise.
Intellectual Forces and the Rise of Sociological Theory
1.) The Enlightenment was a period of intellectual development and change in philosophical thought beginning in the eighteenth century. Enlightenment thinkers sought to combine reason with empirical research on the model of Newtonian science. They tried to produce highly systematic bodies of thought that made rational sense and that could be derived from real-world observation. Convinced that the world could be comprehended and controlled using reason and research, they believed traditional social values and institutions to be irrational and inhibitive of human development. Their ideas conflicted with traditional religious bodies like the Catholic Church, the political regimes of Europe's absolutist monarchies, and the social system of feudalism. They placed their faith instead in the power of the individual's capacity to reason. Early sociology also maintained a faith in empiricism and rational inquiry.
2.) A conservative reaction to the Enlightenment, characterized by a strong anti-modern sentiment, also influenced early theorists. The conservative reaction led thinkers to emphasize that society had an existence of its own, in contrast to the individualism of the Enlightenment. Additionally, they had a cautious approach to social change and a tendency to see modern developments like industrialization, urbanization, and bureaucratization as having disorganizing effects.
Broad Category of Classical Functionalists in Sociology
Claude Henri Saint-Simon
Claude Henri Saint-Simon (1760-1825) was a positivist who believed that the study of social phenomena should employ the same scientific techniques as the natural sciences. But he also saw the need for socialist reforms, especially centralized planning of the economic system.
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte (1798-1857) coined the term "sociology." Like Saint-Simon, he believed the study of social phenomena should employ scientific techniques. But Comte was disturbed by the chaos of French society and was critical of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Comte developed an evolutionary theory of social change in his law of the three stages. He argued that social disorder was caused by ideas left over from the idea systems of earlier stages. Only when a scientific footing for the governing of society was established would the social upheavals of his time cease. Comte also stressed the systematic character of society and accorded great importance to the role of consensus. These beliefs made Comte a forerunner of positivism and reformism in classical sociological theory.
The thoughts of Auguste Comte, who coined the term sociology, while dated and riddled with weaknesses, continue in many ways to be important to contemporary sociology. First and foremost, Comte's positivism - the search for invariant laws governing the social and natural worlds - has influenced profoundly the ways in which sociologists have conducted sociological inquiry. Comte argued that sociologist (and other scholars), through theory, speculation, and empirical research, could create a realist science that would accurately "copy" or represent the way things actually are in the world. Furthermore, Comte argued that sociology could become a "social physics" that is a social science on a par with the most positivistic of sciences, physics. Comte believed that sociology would eventually occupy the very pinnacle of a hierarchy of sciences. Comte also identified four methods of sociology. To this day, in their inquiries sociologists continue to use the methods of observation, experimentation, comparison, and historical research. While Comte did write about methods of research, he most often engaged in speculation or theorizing in order to attempt to discover invariant laws of the social world.
Comte's "law of the three stages"
The law of three stages is an example of his search for invariant laws governing the social world. Comte argued that the human mind, individual human beings, all knowledge, and world history develop through three successive stages.
1.) The theological stage is dominated by a search for the essential nature of things, and people come to believe that all phenomena are created and influenced by gods and supernatural forces. Monotheism is the ultimate belief of the theological stage.
2.) The metaphysical stage is a transitional stage in which mysterious, abstract forces (e.g., nature) replace supernatural forces as the powers that explain the workings of the world.
3.) The positivist stage is the last and highest stage in Comte's work. In this stage, people search for invariant laws that govern all of the phenomena of the world.
Comte also used the term positivism in a second sense; that is, as a force that could counter the negativism of his times. In Comte's view, most of Western Europe was mired in political and moral disorder that was a consequence of the French Revolution of 1789. Positivism, in Comte's philosophy, would bring order and progress to the European crisis of ideas. Comte's philosophical idealism thus separates his views from those of his contemporary Karl Marx (1818-1883), who was a materialist.
Social statics and dyanamics
Comte separated social statics from social dynamics. Social statics are concerned with the ways in which the parts of a social system (social structures) interact with one another, as well as the functional relationships between the parts and to the social system as a whole. Comte therefore focused his social statics on the individual, as well as such collective phenomena as the family, religion, language, and the division of labor.
Comte placed greater emphasis on the study of social dynamics, or social change. His theory of social dynamics is founded on the law of the three stages; i.e., the evolution of society is based on the evolution of mind through the theological, metaphysical, and positivist stages. He saw social dynamics as a process of progressive evolution in which people become cumulatively more intelligent and in which altruism eventually triumphs over egoism. This process is one that people can modify or accelerate, but in the end the laws of progressive development dictate the development of society. Comte's research on social evolution focused on Western Europe, which he viewed as the most highly developed part of the world during his times.
Some of Comte's most amusing ideas are found in his plans for the future. Comte envisioned a positivist calendar, public holidays, and temples. He elaborated a plan for his positivist society that included important roles for bankers and industrialists, positivist priests, merchants, manufacturers, and farmers. Comte also envisioned a positivist library of 100 books, titles that he personally selected. He argued that reading other works would contaminate the minds of the people. He also planned to restructure the family to include a father, mother, three children, and paternal grandparents.
Herbert Spencer: Individualism/Holism
Herbert Spencer (1820-1902) depicted society as a system, a whole made up of interrelated parts. He also set forth an evolutionary theory of historical development. Social Darwinism is Spencer's application of evolutionary notions and the concept of survival of the fittest to the social world. According to Ritzer (2000) although the sociological theory of Herbert Spencer has but a small following today, his work was quite popular during his lifetime, particularly in America. Spencer’s theory of society does represent an advance over Comtian theory even though Spencer like Comte, characterized himself as a positivist and derived his concepts of structure and function from the field of biology. Spencer used the Comtian terms of social statics and social dynamics, but not in a descriptive way as Comte did to refer to all types of societies, but rather in a normative way to describe his version of the future ideal society. Furthermore, Spencer was more interested in studying the progress of the external world or objectivity, while Comte focused more on the subjective nature of the progress of human conceptions. Finally, there are important political differences between Spencer and Comte. Spencer had little regard for centralized political control and believed that the government should allow individuals the maximum freedom to pursue their private interests. Comte, on the other hand, desired society to be led by the high priests of positivistic religion.
Spencer’s Evolutionary Theory and Sociology
Spencer defined sociology as the study of societal evolution and believed that the ultimate goal of societal evolution is complete harmony and happiness. Spencer’s theory of evolutionary change is built upon three basic principles: integration, differentiation, and definiteness. Spencer argued that homogenous phenomena are inherently unstable, which makes them subject to constant fluctuations. These fluctuations force homogeneous systems to differentiate, which results in greater multiformity. In other words, homogeneous systems grow to become heterogeneous. Spencer focused much of his energy on trying to legitimize sociology as a scientific discipline. He argued that laypeople might think they deal with the same issues as sociologists do; however, they are not trained to adequately comprehend these issues. One of the ways that Spencer believed sociology could become more legitimate was for sociologists to study other disciplines, especially biology and psychology. Biology could be linked to sociology through the search for the basic “laws of life,” understanding society as a “living body” and focusing on human beings as the starting point of sociological inquiries. Psychology is useful to sociology because it helps to show that emotions or sentiments are linked to social action. According to Spencer, individuals are the source of all social phenomena, and the motives of individuals are key to understanding society as a whole.
Spencer’s Methodology
Spencer realized that studying social phenomena was inherently different from studying natural phenomena; therefore, sociology could not simply imitate the methods used by biologists. Spencer also argued that the psychological method of introspection was ill-suited to studying objective social facts and processes. Sociologists are also faced with the methodological problem of how to keep their own bias in check and gather and report trustworthy data. Spencer advocated a ‘value free’ methodological approach for sociology and cautioned sociologists to be aware of emotional biases that might influence their work, including educational, patriotic, class, political, and theological biases. Spencer was committed to empirical research and employed a comparative historical methodology in much of his work.
The Evolution of Society
Spencer’s general theory of social evolution involves the progress of society towards integration, heterogeneity, and definiteness. It also includes a fourth dimension, the increasing coherence of social groups. Social groups, according to Spencer, strive towards greater harmony and cooperation through the division of labor and the state. Spencer does not develop a linear theory of social evolution; he acknowledges that dissolution or no change at all may occur at any given moment. Spencer was a social realist in that he viewed society as an entity in and of itself thus; the whole of society can live on even if its component parts die. As society grows, it becomes more complex and differentiated. Structures accompany this growth, which function to regulate external concerns like military activities and sustain internal issues like economic activities

Spencer uses his evolutionary theory to trace the movement from simple to compounded societies and from militant to industrial societies. Society evolves from the compounding and recompounding of social groups. It also evolves from military societies dominated by conflict and a coercive regulative system to industrial societies characterized by harmony and a sustaining system of decentralized rule. Spencer thought the society that he was living in was a ‘hybrid society’ exhibiting traits of both military and industrial societies. Although he ultimately hoped society in general would progress towards a state of industry, he recognized that the regression to a militant state was possible.
-Spencer argued that individuals were the source of moral law in a given society, but that God ultimately determined good and evil. Evil itself, according to Spencer, was a result of nonadaptation to external conditions, and that in a perfectly evolved society it would disappear. Spencer also opposed state-administered charity, education, and even basic services like garbage removal. Following his doctrine of the survival of the fittest, Spencer even opposed private philanthropy. State and private charity both helped to maintain “unhealthy” or unfit members of society, and this stifled present and future society from evolving to perfect harmony.

Émile Durkheim: Social Integration and Social Facts
Perhaps one of the greatest sociologists of the late 19th century, Durkheim (1858-1917) grew up in France after it lost the war with Germany in 1870. Durkheim legitimized sociology in France and became a dominant force in the development of the discipline worldwide. Much of his work is concerned with what holds society together, and what makes people work together. Today he is mainly remembered for four books. Namely, The Rules of Sociological Method which was concerned with the differences between sociology and the other social sciences. This book helped to establish sociology as a university discipline. Durkheim's first book, The Division of Labour In Society is concerned with the transition between traditional agricultural societies and modern urban industrial societies, and the differences in social organization between them. Perhaps his most famous book is Suicide, where he asks the question why people kill themselves. For his book he gathered a mass of statistical information from government records. Although Durkheim was politically liberal, he took a more conservative position intellectually, arguing that the social disorders produced by striking social changes could be reduced through social reform. He argued that sociology was the study of structures that are external to and coercive over, the individual; for example, legal codes and shared moral beliefs, which he called social facts. In Suicide he made his case for the importance of sociology by demonstrating that social facts could cause individual behavior. He argued that societies were held together by a strongly held collective morality called the collective conscience. Because of the complexity of modern societies, the collective conscience had become weaker, resulting in a variety of social pathologies. In his later work, Dukheim turned to the religion of primitive societies to demonstrate this. Émile Durkheim was especially concerned with social solidarity, distinguishing between mechanical and organic solidarity. He contended that the distinctive subject matter of sociology should be the study of social facts, which is the importance of the collective consciousness.
Sociology as a Discipline and Social Facts
Emile Durkheim’s effort to establish sociology as a discipline distinct from philosophy and psychology is evident in the two main themes that permeate his work. Namely
1. The priority of the social over the individual and
2. The idea that society can be studied scientifically.
Durkheim’s concept of social facts, in particular, differentiates sociology from philosophy and psychology. Social facts are the social structures and cultural norms and values that are external to and coercive over, individuals. Social facts are not attached to any particular individual; nor are they reducible to individual consciousness. Thus, social facts can be studied empirically. ]
According to Durkheim, two different types of social facts exist: material and immaterial. Durkheim was most interested in studying the latter, particularly morality, collective conscience, collective representation, and social currents.
The Division of Labor
In this work Durkheim discusses how modern society is held together by a division of labor that makes individuals dependent upon one another because they specialize in different types of work. Durkheim is particularly concerned about how the division of labor changes the way that individuals feel they are part of society as a whole. Societies with little division of labor (i.e., where people are self-sufficient) are unified by mechanical solidarity; all people engage in similar tasks and thus have similar responsibilities, which builds a strong collective conscience. Modern society, however, is held together by organic solidarity (the differences between people), which weakens collective conscience. Durkheim studied these different types of solidarity through laws. A society with mechanical solidarity is characterized by repressive law, while a society with organic solidarity is characterized by restitutive law.
Moral Education and Social Reform
Durkheim believed that society is the source of morality; therefore, he also believed that society could be reformed, especially through moral education. According to Durkheim, morality is composed of three elements: discipline, attachment, and autonomy. Discipline constrains egoistic impulses; attachment is the voluntary willingness to be committed to groups; and autonomy is individual responsibility. Education provides children with these three moral tools needed to function in society. Adults can also acquire these moral tools by joining occupational associations. According to Durkheim, these associations would include members of a particular occupation regardless of class position and could provide a level of integration and regulation, both of which tend to be weakened by the division of labor.
Criticisms
Durkheim is often criticized for being a functionalist and a positivist. However, his historical comparative methodology puts him at odds with functionalists and positivists who believe that invariant social laws exist that can explain social phenomenon across all societies. Durkheim does tend to emphasize the objective nature of social facts; thus, he neglects the subjective interpretations that social actors may have of a particular social phenomenon and the agency of individuals in general to control social forces. Furthermore, Durkheim’s basic assumption about human nature that people are driven by their passion for gratification that can never be satisfied is not empirically substantiated in any of his work. Finally, Durkheim understands of the relationship between morality and sociology has been critiqued as being conservative.
Cooley, Charles Horton (1864-1929)
Cooley was one of the first generation of American sociologists, but an eccentric one who differed from most of his peers. Whereas the majority of the pioneers were Social Darwinians, Cooley was a less mechanical evolutionist. Most were reformists, often inspired by religion, while Cooley was more artistic and romantic; While most were aiming to make sociology a rigorously objective (positivist) science, Cooley was an idealist, more concerned with introspection and imagination. He is one of the earliest of humanistic sociologists.
Cooley sought to abolish the dualisms of society/individual and body/mind, emphasizing instead their interconnections, and conceptualizing them as functional and organic wholes. The root problem of social science was the mutual interrelationship between the individual and social order. In his view, the concepts of the 'individual' and of 'society' could be defined only in relationship to each other, since human life was essentially a matter of social intercourse - of society shaping the individual and individuals shaping society. However, his critics did not see him as being successful in this enterprise, ultimately siding too much with the individual and idealism.
Cooley launched his career 'in defiance of categories', refusing to label himself a sociologist, and seeking instead to merge history, philosophy, and social psychology. Two of his concepts have, nevertheless, captured the sociological imagination.
1 The first is the looking-glass self: the way in which the individual's sense of self is 'mirrored' and reflected through others. This was an idea later to be greatly expanded by William James and George Herbert Mead in their attempts to build a general theory of the self.
2 The second of Cooley's lasting concepts is that of the 'primary group', characterized by close, intimate, face-to-face interaction, which Cooley contrasted with the larger and more disparate 'nucleated group' (subsequently referred to more commonly as the 'secondary group'), whose members were rarely if ever all in direct contact. (Families or friendship circles are typical primary groups; trade unions and political parties are characteristically secondary groups.)
Cooley was both a student and professor at the University of Michigan. His major works are Human Nature and the Social Order (1902). Social Organisation (1909). and Social Process (1918).
Polanyi, Karl (1886-1964)
An influential and internationally renowned Austrian-born economic historian, who taught widely throughout Europe and the United States, Polanyi has a substantial and continuing influence in sociology because of the way in which his empirical studies undermine many of the assumptions of neoclassical economic theory.
His best-known publication is The Great Transformation (l944) - which has a Foreword by Robert M. Maclver - in which he sought to document the causes of the two world wars, the depression of the 1930s, and the basis of the 'new order' of the mid-twentieth century. His was a stringent study of the consequences of the emergence of the 'world market' and the manner in which society can protect itself against its consequences. He warned against promoting the economy to the point at which power becomes highly concentrated, economic decision-making escapes human control, and human dignity and freedom are threatened. This economism could destroy society by undermining social cohesion: it requires that the economy be embedded within relations of social control similar to those found in traditional societies.
His other major publications, notably the co-authored Trade and Markets in the Early Empires (1957) and the posthumously published The Livelihood of Man (1977) develop Polanyi's so-called substantivist critique of liberalism, challenging the idea that freedom and justice are inextricably tied to the free market, and documenting the various ways in which economic processes in any society are necessarily shaped by its cultural, political, and social institutions.
Polanyi was a genuinely interdisciplinary scholar: an entry on him is also likely to be found in dictionaries of economics, history, anthropology, and political science. Most recently his work has become part of the debate around the possibility for a 'Third Way' in the transition from communism to the market. Untrammelled market economics, as exported by most Western advisers, are seen by some East European social scientists and policy-makers as likely to create the kinds of problems associated with the self-regulating market that Polanyi documents across a range of historical examples. The opposition between the 'logic of the economy' and the 'logic of society' are particularly acutely felt by these post communist societies as they leave their protective states and face the uncertainties of a rapid transition to the market.

ANTHROPOLOGY
Bronislaw Malinowski (1884 – 1942)
Malinowski was born on 7 April 1884 in Poland in an upper-class family that was very cultured and had deep scholarly interests. Through the acquisition of an outstanding education and many years of fieldwork, he became a very influential British anthropologist and the founder of Functionalism. The Golden Bough by Sir James Frazer sparked his interest in anthropology. Books by Malinowski include The Trobriand Islands and Argonauts of the Western Pacific.
Malinowski, Functionalism and Ethnography
Malinowski is remembered as the father of the functionalist school of anthropology as well as for his role in developing the methods and the primacy of anthropological fieldwork. Malinowski founded the field of Social Anthropology known as Functionalism, holding the belief that all components of society interlock to form a well-balanced system. He emphasized characteristics of beliefs, ceremonies, customs, institutions, religion, ritual and sexual taboos.
His New York Times obituary named him an "integrator of ten thousand cultural characteristics". Malinowski first rose to prominent notice through his studies of Pacific Islanders, especially those conducted among the Trobriand Islanders whose marriage, trade, and religious customs he studied extensively. Malinowski helped develop the field of anthropology from a primarily evolutionary focus into sociological and psychological fields of enquiry. Some of the more noteworthy by-products of his fieldwork in this direction was various evidence that debunked the Freudian notion of a universal Oedipal Complex and also showed that so-called primitive peoples are capable of the same types and levels of cognitive reasoning as those from more "advanced" societies. Malinowski's ideas and methodologies came to be widely embraced by the Boasian influenced school of American Anthropology, making him one of the most influential anthropologists of the 20th century.
Although Malinowski did not wholly "invent" fieldwork, his careful studies, and the brilliant observations which they allowed him to make, did much to popularize and revolutionize its importance. Like his American counterpart Franz Boaz, Malinowski emphasized the importance of immersing oneself deeply in the indigenous language or languages. But perhaps more than any other researcher before him, Malinowski embraced the value of studying everyday life in all its mundane aspects. Thus for him it was not enough to simply record what tribal members said about their religious beliefs, sexual practices, marriage customs, or trade relationships – it was important to also study how this measured up to, or played out in, what they did in everyday life.
The significance of this approach is that it became clear that the sweeping generalizations made by the so-called "arm chair" anthropologists of the past i.e Lewis Henry Morgan and Sir James Frazer had been wrong in many ways. Most notably, the new work showed that the Social Darwinist claims that all societies passed through the same distinct and predictable stages, in the same predictable order, along a single linear trajectory were simply false. Societies varied in far more complicated and hard to predict, or understand, ways than the old linear model had predicted – and the wealth of diversity was far greater than previously imagined.
Malinowski is primarily acknowledged as the father of functionalism in anthropology. Functionalism, which is based on the notion that all the parts of the society work together in an integrated whole, can be readily contrasted to the structuralism of Emile Durkheim and the structural functionalism of Radcliffe-Brown each of which place more emphasis on society as a whole, and the ways that its institutions serve and maintain it. Malinowski meanwhile placed greater emphasis on the actions of the individual: how the individual's needs were served by society's institutions, customary practices and beliefs, and how the psychology of those individuals might lead them to generate change.
Radcliffe-Brown (1881-1955) and Structural Functionalism
Radcliffe-Brown’s ideas on structural functionalism stress the preeminence of society and its structure over the individuals, and how the various elements of the social structure function to maintain social order and equilibrium. Radcliffe-Brown focused attention on social structure. He suggested that a society is a system of relationships maintaining itself through cybernetic feedback, while institutions are orderly sets of relationships whose function is to maintain the society as a system. Radcliffe-Brown, following Auguste Comte, believed that the social constituted a separate "level" of reality distinct from those of biological forms and inorganic matter. Furthermore, he believed that explanations of social phenomena had to be constructed within the social level. He believed that individuals were replaceable, transient occupants of social roles. Unlike Malinowski's emphasis on individuals, Radcliffe-Brown considered individuals irrelevant
The weakness of functionalist theory was that it failed to explain why societies are different or similar. Functionalist anthropology assumed an orderly world, paying little or no attention to competition and conflict. The theory was ahistorical, neglecting historical processes. The theory was also unable to explain social and cultural change, as it viewed society as stable and unchanging. Despite these weaknesses, functionalism influenced a great deal of empirical research in anthropology. Franz Boas (1858-1942)
Franz Boas has come to be regarded as the "father" of American anthropology. Boas died in 1942 after a lengthy career as the preeminent anthropologist in the United States. Boas is also referred to as having managed to have charted a path from the German Enlightenment to the modernist era. He is moreover; frequently cited as an important, even a founding, figure of a new "modernist" anthropology. Boas' history shares a number of significant similarities with that of Bronislaw Malinowski as both were central figures around which developed, in the 1920s, identifiable new schools of anthropological thought; both were immigrants to the countries in which they spent their working lives; both died in the U.S in 1942, one a wartime refugee from Europe, the other a laborer in the anti-fascist causes of intellectual freedom and refugee relief. Boas and Malinowski's common experiences of alienation and immigration, reinforced in the experience of fieldwork and resolved in their theoretical searches for cultural coherence and social functioning, is the central thread which makes both figures "cosmopolitan" participants in the "modernist sensibility".
Levi Strauss and Structuralism
Structuralism is one of a new group of theories in anthropology known as studies of cognitive structure. These schools of thought, including structuralism, ethno science, and symbolic anthropology, give attention to the cognitive or underlying mental structures that provide order to culture. Structuralism is an intellectual movement which bases its analysis on the reduction of materials into models referred to as structures. It is fundamental to structuralism that it be understood that these structures are not concrete manifestations of reality; but cognitive models of reality. Lévi-Strauss stresses that all cultures and not only scholars understand the universe around them through such models, and that humankind comprehends his world on the basis of these mental structures. The most difficult aspect of structuralism is that these structures are not based on concrete or physical phenomena as they are in biological or other sciences but based on cultural realities such as kinship organization or tales. These cultural realities are mental as are the structures which produce them. There are many structuralists including Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan and Lévi-Strauss. It is also worth noting that structuralists claim that to understand the surface structure, one has to understand the deep structure, and how it influences the surface structure.
Classical Conflict Tradition in Sociology
Karl Marx (1818 – 1883) - Social class and conflict, sociology of knowledge.
Karl Marx wrote in response to the rapid changes that were taking place in Europe in response to industrialization, especially in Germany. This period of dislocation and poverty is the context for Marx’s notion of alienation, and his critiques were designed to show that capitalism was the basis for alienation and to develop a plan for action for overcoming the structures of capitalism. Marx understood that inherent within capitalism was also a system of power: it is both economic and political; it both coerces and exploits workers. Actions undertaken in the name of economic necessity disguise political decisions. The focus of Marx’s work was mainly on the historical basis of inequality, and specifically inequality under capitalism. Marx’s writings on the capitalist system that is its tendency towards crises and the necessity of inequality are still relevant today. Marx’s ideas had as their basis a unique approach to reality-the dialectic. Influenced by Hegel (1770 – 1831), Marx believed that any study of reality must be aligned to the contradictions within society and Marx saw contradiction as the driver of historical change. Unlike Hegel, Marx believed that these contradictions existed not simply in our minds (i.e., in the way we understand the world), but that they had a concrete material existence. For example in a capitalist system there is the contradiction between the demands of the capitalist to earn a profit and the demands of the worker, who wants to retain some profit to subsist. Over time, the workings of the capitalist system would exacerbate this contradiction, and its resolution can only be achieved through social change.
Marx viewed human nature as historically contingent, shaped by many of the same relations that affect society. In his view, a contradiction exists between our human nature and work in the capitalist system. Though we have powers that identify us as unique animals, our species being, the possibilities for realizing human potential within the capitalist system are frustrated by the structures of capitalism itself. Unlike most social theories that have implicit assumptions about human nature, Marx elaborates a concept of human nature that also informed his view of how society should look. An important factor in this is Marx’s ideas about labor. By objectifying our ideas and satisfying our needs, labor both expresses our human nature and changes it. Through this process, individuals develop their human powers and potentials. Under capitalism, the relationship between labor and human expression changes: rather than laboring to fulfill their needs or express ideas, workers do so at the demands of capitalists. Workers are alienated from their labor because it no longer belongs to the worker, but rather to the capitalist.
Marx on Class Conflict
According to Marx the conflict created by the contradictory positions of two groups, the proletariat and the capitalists, is at the heart of capitalism. Because these represent groups in conflict, Marx called them classes. For Marx, every period of history contained fault lines upon which potential conflict could result, and, thus, every historical period had its own class formations. Because capitalists are continually accumulating capital while also competing with other capitalists, Marx believed that more and more members of society would eventually become proletarians in a process he called proletarianization. Society would then be characterized by a very small number of capitalists exploiting a large number of poor proletarians subsisting on low wages. Marx called this group of proletarians the industrial reserve army. Thus, the normal operation of the capitalist system, through competition and exploitation, produces an ever greater number of workers who will eventually rise up to overthrow the system.

Marx’s future-oriented perspective has its basis in his materialist conception of history. He suggests that the ways societies provide for their material well-being affects the type of relations that people will have with one another, their social institutions, and the prevailing ideas of the day. Marx uses the term “relations of production” to describe social relationships that dominate the productive capacities of a society. Under capitalism, the forces of production lead to a set of relations of production which pit the capitalist and the proletariat against one another. To change the relations of production, Marx felt revolution was necessary. Revolution arises from exploited classes agitating for change in the relations of production that favor transformations in the forces of production.
The relations of production act to dissuade revolutionary behavior, as do the prevalent ideas within society. Many of these ideas hide the true relationships that underlie capitalist society. Marx called these kinds of ideas ideologies. Marx also viewed religion as an ideology. Just as freedom and equality are ideas to be cherished, religion also contains positive dimensions, but it has been used to disguise the true set of relations that are prevalent in capitalism.
Criticisms
Marx has faced a number of criticisms. Most importantly, actual existing communism failed to fulfill its promise. Though these experiments may have distorted Marx’s thought, Marxist theory certainly did not reflect its practice. Second, history has shown that workers have rarely been in the vanguard of revolutionary movements, and indeed have resisted communism in some places. Third, Marx failed to adequately consider gender as a factor in the reproduction of labor and commodity production. Fourth, some have accused Marx of focusing far too much on production, without giving enough attention to the act of consumption. Last, Marx’s historical materialist approach uncritically accepts Western notions of progress.

Georg Simmel (1858-1918) is best known as a micro sociologist who played a significant role in the development of small-group research. Simmel’s basic approach can be described as “methodological relationism,” this is so because he operates on the principle that everything interacts in some way with everything else. His essay on fashion, for example, notes that fashion is a form of social relationship that allows those who wish to conform to do so while also providing the norm from which individualistic people can deviate.
-Within the fashion process, people take on a variety of social roles that play off the decisions and actions of others. On a more general level, people are influenced by both objective culture (the things that people produce) and individual culture (the capacity of individuals to produce, absorb, and control elements of objective culture). Simmel believed that people possess creative capacities (more-life) that enable them to produce objective culture that transcends them. But objective culture (more-than-life) comes to stand in irreconcilable opposition to the creative forces that have produced it in the first place.

Simmel is best known in contemporary sociology for his contributions to our understanding of patterns or forms of social interaction. Simmel made clear that one of his primary interests was association among conscious actors and that his intent was to look at a wide range of interactions that may seem trivial at some times but crucially important at others. One of Simmel’s dominant concerns was the form rather than the content of social interaction. From Simmel’s point of view, the sociologist’s task is to impose a limited number of forms on social reality, extracting commonalities that are found in a wide array of specific interactions.

Along these lines, Simmel attempts to develop geometry of social relations. The crucial difference between the dyad (two-person group) and triad (three-person group) is that a triad presents a greater threat to the individuality of group members. In a larger society, however, an individual is likely to be involved in a number of groups, each of which controls only a small portion of his or her personality. Distance also determines the form of social interaction. For example, the value of an object is a function of its distance from an actor. Simmel considered a wide range of social forms, including exchange, conflict, prostitution, and sociability.

Marxist anthropology
This is based principally on the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxist anthropology provides a materialist model of societal change. Change within a society is seen as the result of contradictions arising between the forces of production (technology) and the relations of production (social organization). Such contradictions are seen to emerge as a result of the struggle between distinct social classes. Current Marxist anthropology focuses on the transformation of social orders and the relationships between conflict and cultural change.

Classical Action tradition
Max Weber’s sociology - Rationality and modernity, methodology of social investigation, religion and economic development

Max Weber (1864-1920) argued against abstract theory he favored an approach to sociological inquiry that generated its theory from rich, systematic, empirical, historical research. This approach required, first of all, an examination of the relationships between, and the respective roles of, history and sociology in inquiry.
Weber argued that sociology was to develop concepts for the analysis of concrete phenomena, which would allow sociologists to then make generalizations about historical phenomena.
-History, on the other hand, would use sociological concepts in order to perform causal analysis of particular historical events, structures, and processes. In scholarly practice, according to Weber, sociology and history are interdependent.
-Weber argued that understanding, or verstehen, was the proper way of studying social phenomena. The method of verstehen strives to understand the meanings that human beings attribute to their experiences, interactions, and actions. Weber construed verstehen as a methodical, systematic, and rigorous form of inquiry that could be employed in both macro- and micro-sociological analysis.
-Weber’s formulation of causality stresses the great variety of factors that may precipitate the emergence of complex phenomena such as modern capitalism. Moreover, Weber argued that social scientists, unlike natural scientists, must take into account the meanings that actors attribute to their interactions when considering causality.
-Weber’s greatest contribution to sociology is known as the ideal type. The ideal type is basically a theoretical model constructed by means of a detailed empirical study of a phenomenon. An ideal type is an intellectual construct that a sociologist may use to study historical realities by means of their similarities to, and divergences from, the model. Ideal types are not utopias or images of what the world ought to look like.
-Weber did argue, however, that the values of one’s society often help to decide what a scholar will study. He contended that, while values play this very important role in the research process, they must be kept out of the collection and interpretation of data.
-Weber developed a multidimensional theory of stratification that incorporated class, status and party. Class is determined by one’s economic or market situation (i.e., life chances), and it is not a community but rather a possible basis for communal action. -Status is a matter of honor, prestige, and one’s style of life. Parties, according to Weber, are organized structures that exist for the purposes of gaining domination in some sphere of social life.
-Class, status, and party may be related in many ways in a given empirical case, which provides the sociologist with a very sophisticated set of conceptual tools for the analysis of stratification and power.
Weber also made a profound contribution to the study of obedience with his ideal types of legitimate domination or authority.
1. Rational–legal authority rests on rules and law.
2. Traditional authority rests on belief in established practices and traditions. This authority is legitimate because it is exercised the way it has always been exercised.
3. Charismatic authority rests on belief in the extraordinary powers or qualities of a leader.
Legal authority, for example, is often associated with bureaucracy, while traditional authority is associated with gerontocracy, patriarchalism, patrimonialism, and feudalism. Charismatic authority may be associated with a charismatic form of organization. The dilemma of charismatic authority, however, consists of the difficulty of maintaining charisma when the charismatic leader dies.
-Weber also argued that rationalization is a long-term historical process that has transformed the modern world. He was most concerned with processes of formal and substantive rationalization, especially as propelled by capitalism and bureaucracy.
-Weber argued that rationalization has occurred in many spheres, including the economy, law, religion, politics, the city, and art.
-Weber’s arguments regarding rationalization are exemplified in his studies of religion and capitalism. His studies inquire into the ways in which religious ideas, the spirit of capitalism, and capitalism as an economic system, are interrelated. In short, according to Weber, Calvinism as a rational, methodical system of religious beliefs and practices was an important factor in the emergence of modern capitalism in the Western world. The economic ethics of other religions, such as Hinduism and Confucianism, inhibited the emergence of modern capitalism in India and China. Once modern capitalism emerged in the Western world, however, it spread the effects of rationalization worldwide.