HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGY.

 

 HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIOLOGY

By WILBERT MASAMBA

-be able to discuss factors that led to development of sociology

-analyze the factors that influenced the development of sociology.

One must note that no one factor can adequately explain the rise of sociology as a subject. It was a combination of cultural, economic and political changes that led to the development of sociology as a discipline.

1. The enlightenment period.

Perhaps it was the most significant and direct influence on the emergence of the discipline of sociology is that of the intellectual revolution referred to as the enlightenment. This was established   by a loosely connected collection of philosophers, economists, scientists and other thinkers who introduced new ideas and criticized existing approaches to all of existence.

Central to their thinking was a focus on empiricism and rationality. Like the political revolutionaries , the intellectuals of the enlightenment advocated for a radical break with the past. Until this time , the tendency had been to look to the past for answers to the problems of the day usually in ancient religious or philosophical texts. Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire and Adam Smith showed how we can look at the world for ourselves and understand it. Most crucial of all they demonstrated  that we can build a better society based on that understanding.

It is the novelty of the situation people faced in the 18th  and 19th  centuries which gave birth to sociology . People saw the potential for a new and better society brought about through science, rationality and mass societies but they also saw the possibility (and reality) of a much worse society of poverty and degradation also enabled by these same changes. The early sociologists tackled both the positive and the negative in the new age of modernity and forever changed helped us to get  a better understanding of how these changes had come about and what we should do in response   to them.

2. POLITICAL REVOLUTION (FRENCH REVOLUTION)   

The French revolution in 1789 which carried over through the 19th century was the most immediate factor in the rise of sociological theorizing. The impact of these revolutions on much society   was enormous and many positive changes resulted. However, what attracted the attentions of many early theorists was not the positive consequences but the negative effects of such changes, These writers were particularly disturbed especially in France. They were united in a desire to restore order to society. Some extreme thinkers and sophisticated thinkers wanted to return to the peaceful and relatively orderly days of the middle ages and recognized that social change had made such a return impossible. Thus they sought instead to find new bases of order in societies that had  been overturned by the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries. This interest in the issue e of social order was one of the major concerns of classical sociological theories especially Comte, Durkheim and Parsons.

3.THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND THE RISE OF CAPITALISM

The industrial revolution mainly happened in the nineteenth centuries. The industrial revolution   was not a single event but many interrelated developments that culminated in the transformation   of the western world from a largely agricultural to an overwhelmingly industrial system. Due to industrial revolution large number of people left the farms and agricultural land and work for the industrial occupations offered in the burgeoning factories. The factories themselves were transformed by a long series of technological improvements. Large economic bureaucracies arose to pro  vide the many services needed by industry and emerging capitalist economic system. In this economy, the ideal was a free marketplace where the many products of an industrial system could be exchanged within this system, a few profited greatly while the majority worked long hours for low wages. A reaction against the industrial system and capitalism in general followed and led to t  he labour movement as well as to various radical movements aimed at overthrowing the capitalist system. The industrial revolution, capitalism and reaction against them all involved an enormous upheaval in western society, as upheaval that affected sociologists greatly. Four major figures i  n the early history of sociological theory Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim and George Simmel were preoccupied with the effects of industrial revolution.

4. THE RISE OF SOCIALISM

One set of changes aimed at coping with the excesses of the industrial system and capitalism can  be combined under the heading "Socialism". Although some sociologists favored socialism as a solution to industrial problems, most were personally and intellectually opposed to it. On one side  , Karl Marx was an active supporter of the overthrown of the capitalist system and its replacement by a socialist system. Marx did not develop a theory of socialism but he spent a great deal of time criticizing various aspects of capitalist society. In addition, he engaged in a variety of political activities that he hoped would help bring about the rise of socialist societies. Max Weber and Emile Durkheim were opposed to socialism- although they recognized the problems within capitalist society, They sought social reform within capitalism rather than the social revolution argued by Marx. They feared socialism more than they did capitalism. This fear played a greater role   in shaping sociological theory than did Marx's support of the socialist alternative to capitalism.

5. FEMINISM

In one sense there has always been a feminist perspective, wherever women are subordinated and they have been subordinated almost always and everywhere- they seem to have recognized and   protested that situation in some form. While precursors can be traced to the 1630's high points of feminist activity and writing occurred in the liberationist  movements of modern western history- a first flurry of productivity in the 1780's and 1790's with the debates surrounding the American  and French revolutions- a far more organised, focused effort in the 1850's as part of the mobilization against for women's suffrage (rights to vote in election) and for industrial and civic reform legislation in the progressive era in the united states. All of this had an impact on the development  of sociology, in particular on the work of a number of women in or associated with the field. Feminist concerns filtered into sociology only on the margins, in the work of marginal male theorist s or of the increasingly marginalized female theorists. The men who assumed centrality (Critical  role position in middle) in the profession from Spencer, through Weber and Durkheim made basically conservative responses to the feminist arguments going on around them, making issues of gender on inconsequential topic to which they responded conventionally rather than critically in what they identified and publicly promoted as sociology. They responded in this way even as women were writing a significant body of sociological theory. The history of this gender politics in the profession, which is also part of the history of male response to feminist claims, is only now being written. 

6. URBANIZATION

Partly as a result of the industrial revolution, large members of people in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were uprooted from their rural homes and moved to urban settings. This massive    migration was caused, in large part, by the jobs, created by the industrial system in the urban area s. But it presented many difficulties for those people who had to adjust to urban life. In addition,   the expansion of the cities produced a seemingly endless list of urban problems, overcrowding, pollution, noise, traffic and so fourth. The nature of urban life and its early sociologists, especially  Max Weber and George Simmel. In fact, the first major school of American sociology, the Chic  ago school, was in large part defined by its concern for the city and its interest in using Chicago a s a laboratory in which to study urbanization and its problems.

7. RELIGIOUS CHANGE

Social changes brought on by political revolution the industrial revolution and urbanization had a profound effect on religiosity, many early sociologists came from religious backgrounds and were actively and in some cases professionally involved in religion. They brought to sociology the objectives they wished to improve people's lives, sociology was transformed into a religion. For others, their sociological theories bore an unmistakable religious imprint. Durkheim wrote one of h is major works on religion, morality played a key role not only in Durkheim's sociology but also   in the work of  Talcott Parsons. A large portion of Weber's work also was devoted to the religions of the world. Marx too, had an interest in religiosity, but his orientation was for more critical.

8. THE GROWTH OF SCIENCE

As sociological theory was being developed there was an increasing emphasis on science, not onl yin colleges and universities but in society as a whole. The technological products of science we  re permeating (spread though) every sector of life, and science was acquiring enormous prestige.  Those associated with the most successful sciences (Physics, biology, chemistry) were accorded   honored places in society. Sociologists (Comte, Durkheim, Spencer and Mead) from the beginning were preoccupied with science, and many wanted to model sociology after the successful physical and biological sciences. However, a debate soon developed between those who wholeheartedly accepted the scientific model and those who thought that distinctive characteristics of social  life made a wholesale adoption of a scientific model difficult and unwise. The issue of the relationship between sociology and science is debated to this day, although even a glance at the major journals in the field, at least in the United States, indicates the predominance of those who favor sociology as a science.

In conclusion, one can safely agree with Livesey (2014) who argues that the origins of sociology can be traced from the great cultural upheavals, political revolutions and economic changes that occurred in Europe from the end of 17th century.

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