This document discusses the nature and development of modern sociological theories from the 1920s to 1960s. It notes that classical sociological theories became foundational due to how subsequent modern theories engaged with them. Major political and social changes like the world wars, rise of fascism/communism, and decolonization stimulated the emergence of new sociological perspectives like functionalism and conflict theory to understand issues like democracy, economic development, and state-society relations. The professionalization of American sociology in universities led to distinct schools of thought and a focus on empirical research methods.

1. NATURE OF MODERN
SOCIOLOGICAL THEORIES

2. • Modern Sociological thought- the middle period of
sociology from 1920s to the 1960s
• Classical theorists became classics as a result of the extent
to which their ideas, through this modern period served as
critical foils
• Industrialism as a stimulus to the rise of sociology in
general
• Major socio-political changes contributed to the
development of another set of theories in sociology

3. SOCIO-POLITICAL CHANGES
• The classic period of sociology start to wane with the First World War and
its aftermath; shattered German intellectual life
• In 1917, the Russian Revolution and the creation of the Soviet Union
• The rise of Fascism and Nazism-leading in 1939, to the Second World
War-The military conflicts bracketed the Great Depression of the 1920s
and 1930s which raised the possibility that Marx’s predictions about the
demise of capitalism and attracted many intellectuals and social theorists to
communism
• stifled the freedom of intellectual expression— Forced Jews, the
strongest mainstays of European intelligentsia had to flee to the USA, which
had profound influence on Sociology- emergence of Frankfurt school.

4. ‘IT WAS DIFFICULT TO KEEP
POLITICS OUT OF SOCIOLOGY’
• The Cold War confrontation between the capitalist West and
the communist Soviet Union- a confrontation that shaped
Sociology
• The concerns of Sociology in those days were: conditions
supporting democratic societies, the consequences of
economic affluence, the Third World and its development, the
nature of the state and its relation to the economy, and more.
• Sociology tried to answer these question by a variety of
approaches like Marxism, functionalism, structuralism etc.

5. THE SCHOOLING OF SOCIOLOGY
• Classical theorists Vs Modern schools of thought
• Modern Sociological Schools- because of the large
numbers of people involved, also as a consequence
of sociology becoming established in universities (for
example, the University of Chicago became the base
for symbolic interactionists, while the luminaries of
the American functionalist theory were associated
with Harvard and Columbia, and Critical Theory
initially with Frankfurt).

6. • Modern Sociology- a period witnessing the rise of a
distinctive American Sociology rivalling European social
thought
• less philosophical in tone- more empirical- developing
independently
• most significant distinctiveness of American sociology
was the consideration it gave, beginning in the 1930s, to
professionalising empirical research in sociology and to
the curriculum of sociological training

7. • Following the models of psychology and economics, efforts were
made to develop methods of empirical research.
• For instance, Paul Lazarsfeld another exiled European, bringing
ideas developed in Germany to the USA, together with
colleagues at New York’s Columbia University set out a research
methods framework, building on earlier techniques used and
developed at Chicago, that became known as `variable analysis’
and was the first basis for modern quantitative sociology and
survey research- resulted in Sociology ranking alongside the
well-developed human sciences of Psychology and economics
•

8. • The post-Second World War prosperity raised issues about the
nature of capitalism and whether it had been transformed into a
new economic and political order representing a partnership
between the capital and the pluralist state. Class conflict was over
and ideology a thing of the past.
• By the 1960s Black Activist movements, and protests against the
war in Vietnam, challenged the benign picture of modern society
and the emergence of conflict theory opposed what was wrongly
seen as the necessary conservatism of structural-functionalism.
Sociology was repoliticised.
• The 1960s and 1970s saw a rediscovery of European social
thought in the Frankfurt School structuralism as a reaction against
the positivism of the then sociological orthodoxy of functionalism
and variable analysis. In the United States symbolic interactionism
and ethnomethodology had a brief resurgence.

9. ACTIVITIES
• Do you think that modern sociological theories were
also a product of societal changes? If yes, why?
• It is difficult to keep politics out of sociology. Critically
reflect in the context of the emergence of modern
sociological theories.
• Do you think that the rationale for classification of
sociology into different schools of thought was largely
a product of American Sociology? Substantiate.

10. REFERENCES
• Wes W. Sharrock, John A. Hughes, Peter J. Martin -
Understanding Modern Sociology-Sage
Publications (2003)- Ch.1
• Derek R Layder - Understanding Social Theory,
2nd edition (2005)