Sociology is the systematic study of human behavior and social relationships. It examines how societies are formed and change over time through social influences. The sociological perspective and imagination allow us to analyze societies from a broad viewpoint by considering social structures, histories, and human experiences. The founders of sociology in the 19th century, including Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber, established frameworks for understanding social institutions and change through empirical research. They influenced the development of sociology as an academic discipline focused on understanding all aspects of social life scientifically.

2. Is the systematic study of
social behavior and human
groups.
It focuses primarily on the
influence of social relationships
upon and behavior and on how
societies are established and
changed.
(Schaefer, 1989:5)

3. The Sociological Perspective

4. This is a distinctive way of
examining human
interactions. Peter Berger
(1963) describes the
sociological perspective as
seeing the general in
particular.

5. The Sociological Imagination

6. It is the ability to break ourselves
free from our particular
circumstances and see our social
world in a new light. Three
components that form the
sociological imagination are:
 History – how society came to be
and how it is changing and how
history is being made in it.

7.  Biography – the nature of
“human nature” in a society;
what kind of people inhabit a
particular society.
 Social Structure – how the
various institutional orders in a
society operate which ones are
dominant and how are they
held together and how they
might be changing

8. A sociological perspective will help us
to understand this world and the
future it is likely to hold for us. It
helps us in the following ways:
 An improved understanding of a
given set of social circumstances
often gives us a better chance of
controlling them.

9.  Sociology provides the means of
increasing our cultural sensitivities.
 Critical sociological thinking compels
us to investigate the consequences of
adopting particular policy programs
that benefit the greater majority.
 It provides self-enlightenment,
offering groups and individuals an
increased opportunity to alter the
conditions of their own lives.

10. History of Sociology
 Auguste Comte
(1798-1857)
 Who coined the
term sociology in
1838 to describe
this new way
of thinking

11.  applying the scientific approach,
which was first used to study the
physical world to the study of society.
 favored positivism, defined as a way
of understanding based on science; he
believed that society is governed by
invariable laws just as the physical
world operates according to the laws
of nature.

12.  18th & 19 th
centuries striking
informations changed
European society. Three
changes were essentially
important in the
development of Sociology:
 The rise of factory-based
industrial economy

13.  The explosive growth of cities
 The new ideas about
democracy and political rights
Discipline of Sociology was born
in England, France, and
Germany – where changes were
greatest.

14. 20 thcentury Sociology
became an academic
discipline in the United
States, strongly
influenced by Comte’s
ideas.

15. The Major Sociological
Thinkers
Karl Marx
Emile Durkheim
Max Weber

17. Marx's theories about
society, economics and
politics, which are collectively
known as Marxism, hold that all
societies progress through the
dialectic of class struggle. He was
heavily critical of the current
socio-economic form of
society, capitalism.

18. Under socialism, he argued that
society would be governed by the
working class in what he called the
"dictatorship of the proletariat",
the "workers state" or "workers'
democracy".
 He believed that socialism would,
in its turn, eventually be replaced
by a stateless, classless society called
pure communism.

19. Along with believing in the
inevitability of socialism and
communism, Marx actively fought
for the former's implementation,
arguing that both social theorists
and underprivileged people should
carry out organised revolutionary
action to topple capitalism and
bring about socio-economic change.

20. Emile Durkheim founder of
modern sociology; introduced
the theory of
Structural/Functionalism early
in his career, and this theory
would prove as a foundation
for other principles as well.

21. He drew in theory from the Conflict
ideologies of Karl Marx (1818 - 1883),
and of Auguste Compte (1798 - 1857)
who is considered the Father of
sociology.
The Durkheim Era contributed in a
major way to expand the
perspective of the Social discipline
by taking it to a new level when he
applied scientific and empirical
research.

22. the idea of the whole being
greater and different than
the sum of its parts,
anomie or normlessness,
the concept that religion is
equal to society and the
sacred and the profane
(Collins, 1994).

23. Max Weber argued
against abstract theory, and
he favored an approach
to sociological inquiry that
generated its theory from
rich, systematic, empirical,
historical research.

24. This approach
required, first of all, an
examination of the
relationships between,
and the respective roles
of, history and sociology
in inquiry.

25.  He argued that sociology was to develop
concepts for the analysis of concrete
phenomena, which would allow sociologists to
then make generalizations about historical
phenomena.
 He contended that understanding, or
verstehen, was the proper way of studying
social phenomena. Derived from the
interpretive practice known as hermeneutics,
the method of verstehen strives to understand
the meanings that human beings attribute to
their experiences, interactions, and actions.

26. Weber's greatest contribution to the
conceptual arsenal of 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.
Note that ideal types are not utopias or
images of what the world ought to look like.