Sociology is the systematic study of society and social interaction. In order to carry out their studies, sociologists identify cultural patterns and social forces and determine how they affect individuals and groups. They also develop ways to apply their findings to the real world.
organization of labour in new manufacturing systems. These economic changes
emblemize the massive transformation of human life brought about by the creation
of wage labour, capitalist competition, increased mobility, urbanization,
individualism, and all the social problems they wrought: poverty, exploitation,
dangerous working conditions, crime, filth, disease, and the loss of family and other
traditional support networks, etc. It was a time of great social and political upheaval
with the rise of empires that exposed many people—for the first time—to societies
and cultures other than their own. Millions of people were moving into cities and
many people were turning away from their traditional religious beliefs. Wars, strikes,
revolts, and revolutionary actions were reactions to underlying social tensions that
had never existed before and called for critical examination. August Comte in
particular envisioned the new science of sociology as the antidote to conditions that
he described as “moral anarchy.”
Sociology therefore emerged as an extension of the new worldview of science; as a
part of the Enlightenment project and its appreciation of historical change, social
injustice, and the possibilities of social reform; and as a crucial response to the new
and unprecedented types of social problems that appeared in the 19th century. It did
not emerge as a unified science, however, as its founders brought distinctly different
perspectives to its early formulations.
August Comte: The Father of Sociology
Figure 1.6. Auguste Comte is considered by
many to be the father of sociology. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
The term sociology was first coined in 1780 by the French essayist Emmanuel
Joseph Sieyès (1748–1836) in an unpublished manuscript (Fauré et al. 1999). In
1838, the term was reinvented by Auguste Comte (1798–1857). The contradictions
of Comte’s life and the times he lived through can be in large part read into the
concerns that led to his development of sociology. He was born in 1798, year 6 of
the new French Republic, to staunch monarchist and Catholic parents, who lived
comfortably off the father’s earnings as a minor bureaucrat in the tax office. Comte
originally studied to be an engineer, but after rejecting his parents’ conservative
views and declaring himself a republican and free spirit at the age of 13, he got
kicked out of school at 18 for leading a school riot, which ended his chances of
getting a formal education and a position as an academic or government official.
He became a secretary of the utopian socialist philosopher Claude Henri de
Rouvroy Comte de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) until they had a falling out in 1824
(after St. Simon perhaps purloined some of Comte’s essays and signed his own name
to them). Nevertheless, they both thought that society could be studied using the
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