(~J(:l r!-\ rn c~ ~\6Z\Q \.(\ _-.-c-« ~_.~ -_:_'. ;._,, __ c-._~- ·c 0 N- \i)«rs\~~ . .-nr~V eo\. ~,.-, An ,Overview of Theories The relationship between individuals and the society in which they are embedded has been conceptualized in diverse ways and has given rise to very different understandings of how social reality is maintained and reproduced over time. This chapter presents an overview of maj or contemporary approaches to sociology, their assumptions, and the differences and similarities among them. Their comparative strengths and limitations are examined through critical questions that sociologists, inspired by different approaches, have directed toward each other. Different perspectives start with different problems, ask different questions, see and ignore different things. It is import- ant to try to see how they complement each other, to learn to cMUenge the contradic- tions, and thus to explore for the truth. However deep the differences between approaches, all share the same fundamental concern with developing our knowledge of the character of social life. The Origins of SOCiology In one respect, sociology has always been done, since people have always questioned the nature ofthe social world. But as a separ- ate scientific discipline, sociology emerged in the eighteenth century. Social upheavals that occurred during this era brought such profound transformations that most hitherto taken-far-granted assumptions about society and social relations were thrown into doubt. A democratic revolution occurred in America in 1776 as immigrants to the new world fought for independence from the colonial domination of Britain and then sought to found a society based on new principles of equality. In 1789 the old feudal structures of European society were shaken by the French Revolution. This revolution was especially significant because it represented the delib- erate overthrow of a traditional social order. Landless peasants and industrial labourers revolted against the rule of the landed ! \ .1 j ! , I 1 Ahmed Sticky Note Paragraph 1 Ahmed Highlight aristocracy and the clergy. Many thousands of people were guillotined before some semblance of a new order was established. These revolutions prompted a new view of society, a secular view. Social order was no longer seen as ordained by God and main- tained by divine right of kings. It was struc- tured by people and therefore could be changed by people. The Rise of Capitalism The eighteenth century also saw the advent of another form of revolution that was destined to change irrevocably the old order of things. This was the transformation from feudalism to capitalism in agriculture. These terms refer primarily to how produc- tion was orgallized and to the relationship between people and the land on which they depended for their livelihood. Under the feudal system, which pre- dominated in Europe until aro ...

1. (~J(:l r!- rn c~
~6ZQ
.(
_-.-c-« ~_.~ -_:_'.
;._,, __ c-._~-
·c 0 N- i)«rs~~
. .-nr~V eo. ~,.-,
An
,Overview of Theories
The relationship between individuals and
the society in which they are embedded has
been conceptualized in diverse ways and has
given rise to very different understandings of
how social reality is maintained and
reproduced over time. This chapter presents
an overview of maj or contemporary
approaches to sociology, their assumptions,
and the differences and similarities among
them. Their comparative strengths and
limitations are examined through critical
questions that sociologists, inspired by
different approaches, have directed toward
each other. Different perspectives start with
different problems, ask different questions,
see and ignore different things. It is import-
ant to try to see how they complement each
other, to learn to cMUenge the contradic-

2. tions, and thus to explore for the truth.
However deep the differences between
approaches, all share the same fundamental
concern with developing our knowledge of
the character of social life.
The Origins of SOCiology
In one respect, sociology has always been
done, since people have always questioned
the nature ofthe social world. But as a separ-
ate scientific discipline, sociology emerged in
the eighteenth century. Social upheavals
that occurred during this era brought such
profound transformations that most hitherto
taken-far-granted assumptions about society
and social relations were thrown into doubt.
A democratic revolution occurred in America
in 1776 as immigrants to the new world
fought for independence from the colonial
domination of Britain and then sought to
found a society based on new principles of
equality. In 1789 the old feudal structures of
European society were shaken by the French
Revolution. This revolution was especially
significant because it represented the delib-
erate overthrow of a traditional social order.
Landless peasants and industrial labourers
revolted against the rule of the landed
!
.1
j
!

3. ,
I
1
Ahmed
Sticky Note
Paragraph 1
Ahmed
Highlight
aristocracy and the clergy. Many thousands
of people were guillotined before some
semblance of a new order was established.
These revolutions prompted a new view of
society, a secular view. Social order was no
longer seen as ordained by God and main-
tained by divine right of kings. It was struc-
tured by people and therefore could be
changed by people.
The Rise of Capitalism
The eighteenth century also saw the advent
of another form of revolution that was
destined to change irrevocably the old order
of things. This was the transformation from
feudalism to capitalism in agriculture.
These terms refer primarily to how produc-
tion was orgallized and to the relationship
between people and the land on which they
depended for their livelihood.

4. Under the feudal system, which pre-
dominated in Europe until around the begin-
ning of the eighteenth century, most people
had some direct access to land, either as
lords or as serfs and peasants. This rela-
tionship to land was established through
hereditary right rather than through
purchase. The nobility managed the vast
estates and directed the work of the
labourers. Generations of labourers were
tied to the land that their ancestors had
worked. They owed their labour to the lord of
the estate but were entitled to fixed shares of
the harvest to meet their own subsistence
needs. In addition, they had plots of land on
which to grow vegetables or to raise animals
for their personal use. The lords had an
obligation to maintain their serfs. Beyond
this, the lords extracted what surplus they
could, to sell in exchange for luxury items
and a limited range ~f manufactured goods.
The system was very inegalitarian, but it did
ensure that the majority of people were able
to produce most of what they needed to sus-
tain themselves and their. families, with
relatively limited dependence on the
AN OVERVIEW OF THEORIES III 13
purchase or sale of commodities in markets.
The capitalist revolution in agriculture
fundamentally changed this pattern of pro-
duction. Within a relatively short period of
time, the majority of labouring people lost
their hereditary right of access to land and,

5. with it, their ability to produce for their own
subsistence needs. They had to work for
wages in order to purchase what they
needed. Land came to be the private property
of the lords.
How did this come about?
The impetus for change in Europe came
from expanding markets, particularly for
wool and meat and some specialized cereal
crops. It became advantageous for feudal
lords to shift the focus of production from
mixed produce for local consumption to sheep
for sale in the markets. Huge estates were
divided into smaller, enclosed fields, suitable
for sheep pastures. But with this change, the
labour of serfs on the big estates became
superfluous. It takes relatively few people to
manage large flocks of sheep. The feudal
obligation of the lord to support serfs became
increasingly .onerous, and so they began to
break the serfs' hereditary right to live on
the estates. This came about through a long
and bitter struggle. Feudal lords, in effect,
became private landowners. They forcibly
drove the serfs from the land and further
undermined their means of livelihood by
restricting the serfs' rights to graze animals
and to forage for timber on common lands.
The few who remained on the estates became
hired labourers, paid for their work with
wages. Beyond payment of wages, the land-
owners had no obligations to provide for the
subsistence needs of workers or their
families. Those who were driven off found

6. themselves reduced to landless labourers,
able to survive only by selling their labour
power for wages with which to buy food,
clothing, and shelter.
Capitalism is the term used to describe
this pattern where the means of production
Ahmed
Highlight
Ahmed
Highlight
Ahmed
Highlight
Ahmed
Highlight
Ahmed
Highlight
Ahmed
Sticky Note
Paragraph 2
Ahmed
Sticky Note
Paragraph 3
Ahmed
Sticky Note
Paragraph 4

7. Ahmed
Sticky Note
Paragraph 5
Ahmed
Sticky Note
Paragraph 6
14 .. AN OVERVIEW OF SOCIOLOGY
are privately owned, where production is for
profit rather than immediate consumption,
and where workers depend on wage labour
and commodity markets for subsistence'.
Marx describes a particularly vicious exam-
ple of enclosure in Scotland (Clegg and
Dunkerly 1980, 48). The Duchess of Suther-
land conspired to turn all the lands in
Sutherland County into a sheep walk. Be-
tween 1814 and 1820, she systematically
drove out the 15 000 members of the Gael
clan who lived there, burning their villages
and turning all the fields into pastures.
British soldiers enforced this mass eviction.
One old woman who refused to leave was
burned to death in her hut. The Duchess
appropriated 794 000 acres of land that had
belonged to the clan. The land was divided
into 29 huge sheep farms, each inhabited by
a single family. The evicted people were
given a total of only 6000 acres of barren land
along the seashore, about two acres per

8. family, and were forced to pay rent. They had
to eke out a living on the rocky coastline by
fishing. Even this livelihood was later taken
away from them as London fishmongers
smelled a profit in fishing. The Gaels were
driven out again, and the seashore was
rented to the London fishmongers. The peo-
ple were thus forced into Glasgow and other
manufacturing towns to take whatever work
they could find as factory labourers. Others
joined the waves of immigrants who came to
Canada.
The Industrial Revolution
The transition from feudal to capitalist
agriculture was critically important to the
growth of industrialism because it gave rise
to a plentiful pool of landless people who
flocked to the towns in search of employment
as wage earners. These peopl-e provided the
labour force needed in the expanding
manufacturing towns. The Industrial
Revolution first occurred roughly between
1780 and 1840 in England and rapidly
spread throughout Europe, North America,
and parts of the colonized world. People who
had become wealthy as merchants, land-
owners, or adventurers began to invest in
manufacturing industries. They purchased
machines and factories and hired wage
labourers to produce products for sale in the
marketplace. This process was essentially
capitalist in nature: it was geared to produc-
tion for profit rather than for personal sub-
sistence, and it presupposed a fundamental

9. division of people into those who owned the
machines and factories and those who had to
work for wages in order to survive.
The other prerequisite for the Industrial
Revolution was the expansion of the physical
sciences. During the eighteenth century,
intellectuals in search of the truth
increasingly turned, not back to ancient
scriptures or to the authority of elders, but to
science, testing theories about the physical
world against observations by using experi-
mental methods. In essence, scientific
method seeks to establish arguments on the
basis of factual knowledge that can be
verified by others and that is potentially
refutable by contradictory observations. In
the late eighteenth century, this scientific
approach began to be applied systematically
to society. This application was not easy, but
the first important step had been taken with
the assumptions that the scientific study of
society and people was possible and that
science rather than theology held the key to
understanding .
. Early theories of society were inspired by
the idea of progress. If society was created by
people, it was therefore changeable and
could be made better. In principle it was
perfectible yet, at the same time, industrial-
ization and political revolt spread disrup-
tion, misery, and terror. Revolution was both
destructive and creative, both feared and
welcomed. People trying to come to terms
with the social upheaval were forced to grap-

10. ple with basic questions concerning the
nature of humankind.
Ahmed
Highlight
Ahmed
Highlight
Ahmed
Highlight
Ahmed
Sticky Note
Paragraph 7
Ahmed
Sticky Note
Paragraph 8
Ahmed
Sticky Note
Paragraph 9
Thomas Hobbes (1588--1679).
Thinkers who feared the revolutions
tended to focus on the uglier aspects of
unrestrained human nature and to stress the
conservative values of maintaining law
and order. They drew upon the classical work
of the British philosopher Thomas Hobbes
(1588-1679) in his famous treatise
Leviathan. Hobbes focussed on the funda-

11. mental question of the basis of order in
society. He reasoned that order is possible
only because society constrains nature. Life
in the state of nature, Hobbes surmised,
might well be nasty, brutish, ugly, and short,
degenerating into a relatively permanent
state of aggression among people. Life as we
experience it is not generally like this
because social structures impose order. In
their own self-interest and in return fo1'
social protection from others, people come to
accept constraints upon their own selfish-
ness and aggression. Society therefore
becomes crucial for individual happiness,
crucial for life· itself. Society regulates rela-
tions and disciplines individuals and so
makes people "social."
Conservatives saw the violent excesses
that characterized the French Revolution as
AN OVERVIEW OF THEORIES Ii 15
an e"Pression of life in the state of nature.
People had suddenly been freed from the
traditional controls of church and nobility,
and the result was chaos and violence. Con-
servatives argued that the restoration of
order in social life required a renewed
emphasis on morality, discipline, and obedi-
ence. The primary mechanism had to be
teaching children to want to be obedient
through a system of programmed learning.
Society was possible only when people inter-
nalized social discipline from a very young
age.

12. Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78).
But there was another view of the French
Revolution and of industrialization, one that
saw them as liberating forces that would
shatter an oppressive feudal order. Advo-
cates of such a vlew drew their inspiration
from the writings of the French philosopher
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-78). Rousseau
had a more benign view ofthe state of nature
than did Hobbes. He snrmised that people
were naturally peace loving and were
inclined to go about their own business and
not bother others provided they were left
Ahmed
Highlight
Ahmed
Highlight
Ahmed
Highlight
Ahmed
Sticky Note
Paragraph 10
Ahmed
Sticky Note
Paragraph 11
Ahmed
Sticky Note

13. Paragraph 12
16 iii AN OVERVIEW OF SOCIOLOGY
,
alone. In Rousseau's philosophy, the com-
plicating question was to explain the evi-
dence of conflict and aggression between
people. Rousseau argued that this did not
arise automatically, from the state of nature.
It arose because people were aggravated by
inegalitarian and repressive social relations.
Social harmony could best be sustained, not
by subjugating children to programmed
learning and discipline, but by giving them
freedom to develop their natural talents and
inclinations with a minimum of frustrating
restrictions.
Radical thinkers adapted Rousseau's
philosophy as a basis for a favourable
interpretation of the French Revolution.
Revolutionaries were no longer seen as rab-
ble who needed the discipline of the feudal
order, but as oppressed serfs rising up
against the nobility who had exploited them
and driven them into destitution as landless
labourers. From this perspective, the
restoration of peace depended upon
establishing a new order based on principles
of liberty, equality, and fraternity.
The philosophical assumptions concern-
ing human nature and society expressed by
Hobbes and Rousseau are still reflected in

14. contemporary sociological theories.
Emphasis upon one view rather than the
other influences the kinds of questions that
sociologists ask, what they tend to focus on,
and what they ignore. The Hobbesian view
promotes concern with the maintenance of
order within society, while those who
espouse Rousseau's view are concerned with
social conflict and revolt.
Ahmed
Highlight
Ahmed
Sticky Note
Paragraph 13
Ahmed
Highlight
Ahmed
Sticky Note
Paragraph 14