For thousands of years men have observed and reflected upon the societies and groups in which they live. Yet sociology is a modern science, not much more than a century old. Auguste Comte, in his classification of the sciences, made sociology both logically and chronologically posterior to the other sciences, as the least general and most complex of all And one of the greatest of modern anthropologists observed that ‘the science of human society is as yet in its extreme infancy’.1
It is true that we can find, in the writings of philosophers, religious teachers, and legislators of all civilizations and epochs, observations and ideas which are relevant to modern sociology. Kautilya’s Arthashástra and Aristotle’s Politics analyze political systems in ways which are still of interest to the sociologist. Nevertheless, there is a real sense in which a new science of society, and not merely a new name,2 was created in the nineteenth century. It is worthwhile to consider the circumstances in which this happened, and to examine the characteristics which distinguish sociology from earlier social thought.3
The circumstances in which sociology appeared may be distinguished into intellectual and material, and I shall discuss them in turn. Naturally, they were interwoven, and an adequate sociological history of sociology, which has not yet been attempted, would have to take account of these interconnections. In this brief introduction I can only mention some of the more important factors.
1A.R.Radcliffe-Brown, Structure and Function in Primitive Society (1952).
2It was Comte who named the new science Sociology. At one time he ‘regretted the hybrid character’ of the word, derived from the Latin socius and Greek logos, but later suggested that ‘there is a compensation…for this etymological defect, in the fact that it recalls the two historical sources—the one intellectual, the other social—from which modern civilization has sprung’. System of Positive Polity (trans. J.H.Bridges), Vol. I, p. 326.
3The histories of social thought emphasise unduly its continuity. It would be helpful and illuminating to have for sociology and the modern social sciences, an account similar to that which H.Butterfield has provided for the natural sciences in The Origins of Modern Science (London 1950), where he gives prominence to a radical change in attitude to the physical world.
The chief intellectual antecedents of sociology are not difficult to identify. ‘Broadly it may be said that sociology has had a fourfold origin in political philosophy, the philosophy of history, biological theories of evolution, and the movements for social and political reform which found it necessary to undertake surveys of social conditions.’1 Two of these, the philosophy of history and the social survey, were particularly important at the outset. They were themselves latecomers in the intellectual history of man.
The philosophy of history as a distinct branch of speculation is a creation of the eighteenth century.2 Among its founders were the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, and Giambattista Vico. The general idea of progress which they helped to formulate profoundly influenced men’s conception of history, and is reflected in the writings of Montesquieu and Voltaire in France, of Herder in Germany, and of a group of Scottish philosophers and historians of the latter part of the eighteenth century, Ferguson, Millar, Robertson and others. This new historical attitude is clearly expressed in a passage in Dugald Stewart’s ‘Memoir of Adam Smith’,3 ‘When, in such a period of society as that in which we live, we compare our intellectual acquirements, our opinions, manners and institutions, with those which prevail among rude tribes, it cannot fail to occur to us as an interesting question, by what gradual steps the transition has been made from the first simple efforts of uncultivated nature, to a state of things so wonderfully artificial and complicated.’ Stewart goes on to say that information is lacking on many stages of this progress, and that its place must be taken by speculation based on the ‘known principles of human nature’. ‘To this species of philosophical investigation, which has no appropriated name in our language, I shall take the liberty of giving the title of Theoretical or Conjectural History, an expression which coincides pretty nearly in its meaning with that of Natural History as employed by Mr. Hume, and with what some French writers have called Histoire Raisonnée.’
In the early part of the nineteenth century the philosophy of history became an important intellectual influence through the
1M.Ginsberg, Reason and Unreason in Society (1947), p. 2.
2We must except the work of the fourteenth century Arab philosopher and historian, Ibn Khaldun. The Prolegomena to his Universal History are remarkable in expounding a theory of history which anticipates that of the European eighteenth century writers, and even Marx; but also as the work of an exceptional man who had neither predecessors nor followers. See C.Issawi, An Arab Philosophy of History (2nd ed. 1955).
3Dugald Stewart, Works, Vol. 10, pp. 33–4.
writings of Hegel and of Saint-Simon.1 From these two thinkers stems the work of Marx and Comte, and thus some of the important strands in modern sociology. We may briefly assess the contributions of the philosophy of history to sociology as having been, on the philosophical side, the notions of development and progress, and on the scientific side, the concepts of historical periods and social types. It was the philosophical historians who were largely responsible for the new conception of society as something more than ‘political society’ or the state. They were concerned with the whole range of social institutions, and made a careful distinction between the state and what they called ‘civil society’. Adam Ferguson’s Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) is perhaps the best example of this approach; in its German translation it seems to have provided Hegel with his terminology and influenced his approach in his early writings on society. Ferguson, in this essay and in later writings, discusses the nature of society, population, family and kinship, the distinctions of rank, property, government, custom, morality and law; that is, he treats society as a system of related institutions. Furthermore, he is concerned to classify societies into types, and to distinguish stages in social development. Similar features are to be found in many of the writings of those whom I have called the philosophical historians; they represent a remarkable unanimity and an abrupt change in the direction of men’s interest in the study of human society. These features re-appear in the nineteenth century in the work of the early sociologists, Comte, Marx, and Spencer.
A second important element in modern sociology is provided by the social survey, which itself had two sources. One was the growing conviction that the methods of the natural sciences should and could be extended to the study of human affairs; that human phenomena could be classified and measured. The other was the concern with poverty (the ‘social problem’), following the recognition that, in industrial societies, poverty was no longer a natural phenomenon, an affliction of nature or of providence, but was the result of human ignorance or of exploitation. Under these two influences, the prestige of natural science and the movements for social reform, the social survey came to occupy an important place in the new science of society. Its progress can best be traced in the industrial societies of Western Europe, in such pioneer works as Sir John Sinclair’s
1For accounts of the development of the philosophy of history and studies of some of the writers mentioned above, see R.Flint, History of the Philosophy of History (1893) and J.B.Bury, The Idea of Progress (1920).
Statistical Account of Scotland (21 vols. 1791–9), and Sir F.M. Eden’s The State of the Poor (3 vols. 1797), in Condorcet’s attempts to work out a ‘mathématique sociale’,1 in Quételet’s ‘physique sociale’;2 and in later studies such as Le Play, Les ouvriers Européens (1855, 2nd enlarged edn. 1877–9), and Booth, Life and Labour of the People in London (1891–1903). The social survey has remained one of the principal methods of sociological enquiry.
These intellectual movements, the philosophy of history and the social survey, were not isolated from the social circumstances of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Western Europe. The new interest in history and in social development was aroused by the rapidity and profundity of social change, and by the contrast of cultures which the voyages of discovery brought to men’s attention. The philosophy of history was not merely a child of thought; it was born also of two revolutions, the industrial revolution in England, and the French revolution. Similarly, the social survey did not emerge only from the ambition of applying the methods of natural science to the human world, but from a new conception of social evils, itself influenced by the material possibilities of an industrial society. A social survey, of poverty or any other social problem, only makes sense if it is believed that something can be done to remove or mitigate such evils. It was, I think, the existence of widespread poverty in the midst of great and growing productive powers, which was responsible for the change of outlook whereby poverty ceased to be a natural problem (or a natural condition) and became a social problem, open to study and amelioration. This was, at the least, an important element in the conviction that exact knowledge might be applied in social reform; and later, that as man had established an ever more complete control over his physical environment so he might come to control his social environment.
Thus, the pre-history of sociology can be assigned to a period of about one hundred years, roughly from 1750 to 1850; or, let us say, from the publication of Montesquieu’s Esprit des lois up to the work of Comte and the early writings of Spencer. The formative period of sociology as a distinct science occupies the second half of the nineteenth century.3 We can see from the brief survey of its origins some of the characteristics which early sociology assumed.
1See G.G.Granger, La mathématique sociale du Marquis de Condorcet (Paris, 1956).
2A.Quételet, Sur l’homme et le développement de ses facultés, ou essai de physique sociale (1835).
3On the history of sociology see H.Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society (London 1959), and Heinz Maus, A Short History of Sociology (London 1962).
In the first place it was encyclopaedic; it was concerned with the whole social life of man, and with the whole of history. Secondly, under the influence of the philosophy of history, reinforced by the biological theory of evolution, it was evolutionary, seeking to identify the principal stages in social evolution. Thirdly, it was conceived as a positive science, identical in character with the natural sciences. In the eighteenth century the social sciences were conceived broadly upon the model of physics; sociology, in the nineteenth century, was modelled upon biology. This is evident in the preoccupation with social evolution, and in the widely accepted conception of society as an organism. The general concern with the scientific character of sociology appears most clearly in the attempts to formulate general laws of social evolution, both in sociology and in anthropology.
These wide claims naturally aroused opposition, especially from those who were working in narrower and more specialised fields; among them historians, economists, and political scientists. It is doubtful whether, even at the present day, sociology has altogether succeeded in living down its early pretentiousness. But we should distinguish among the different claims which were made, and also make a distinction between the claims as to the scope of the subject and the claims as to its discoveries. No-one believes any longer that Comte or Spencer discovered the laws of social evolution (though many believe that Marx did). But it does not follow from this that Comte and Spencer (or, for unbelievers, Marx) were entirely mistaken about the scope of sociology, or that they made no important contributions to its advancement. It seems clear that there is a need for a social science which is concerned with society as a whole, or with total social structure. To say this, however, is to raise the problem of how such a synoptic science can be pursued, and how it is to be related to the other social sciences.
The opposition to sociology in its early phase came largely from the feeling that it aimed, not at co-ordinating, but at absorbing, the other social sciences. In the work of later sociologists such ambitions are explicitly disclaimed. Hobhouse, for example, conceived sociology as ‘a science which has the whole social life of man as its sphere’, and not as another specialism, but he viewed its relation with the other social sciences as one of mutual exchange and mutual stimulation. ‘… General Sociology is neither a separate science complete in itself before specialism begins, nor is it a mere synthesis of the social sciences consisting in a mechanical juxtaposition of their results. It is rather a vitalising principle that runs through all social investigation, nourishing and nourished by it in turn, stimulating inquiry, correlating results, exhibiting the life of the whole in the parts and returning from the study of the parts to a fuller comprehension of the whole.’1
Similarly Durkheim, although he was especially concerned to emphasise the autonomy of sociology and to specify the particular range of phenomena with which it should deal, did not suppose that sociology could be an encyclopaedic science, or that it could be pursued in isolation from the other social sciences. He envisaged, in much the same way as Hobhouse, a diffusion of the sociological approach, and thus a transformation of the special social sciences from within. Only at a later stage did he think that it might be possible to construct a general sociology, comprising more general laws based upon the laws established in the particular fields of the special sciences.2 In his editorial preface to the first volume of the Année Sociologique, Durkheim explained that ‘our efforts will tend especially to promote studies dealing with very limited subjects, and belonging to special branches of sociology. For since general sociology can only be the synthesis of these special sciences, since it can consist only in a comparison of their most general results, it is only possible to the extent that these sciences are developed’.3
It can hardly be claimed that even the more modest aims which Hobhouse and Durkheim formulated have been achieved in a manner compelling general recognition. Of the two thinkers Durkheim was more successful in introducing the sociological approach into other social sciences. Many French scholars, in diverse disciplines, were influenced and stimulated by Durkheim’s work; in law (Davy, Lévy-Bruhl), in economics (F.Simiand), in anthropology (Mauss), in history (Marc Bloch, Granet), in linguistics (Cahen, Meillet)—to mention only the most prominent. Durkheim’s ideas were conveyed not only through his own writings but also, and perhaps even more effectively, through the Année Sociologique which he founded in 1898. His conception of sociology was, so to speak, incarnated in the organisation of the Année Sociologique, each issue of which contained one or two original monographs, and a number of surveys from a sociological viewpoint of the year’s writing in several distinct
1L.T.Hobhouse, Editorial Introduction. The Sociological Review, (London) I(1), 1908.
2See especially Emile Durkheim, ‘Sociologie et sciences sociales’, Revue Philosophique, LV, 1903, and ‘On the relation of Sociology to the social sciences and to philosophy’, Sociological Papers (London), I, 1904.
3 Année Sociologique, 1, 1898, p. iv.
fields of social enquiry. Durkheim justified this arrangement by saying: ‘Sociologists have, we believe, a pressing need to be regularly informed of researches made in the special sciences, the history of law, customs and religion, social statistics, the economic sciences, etc., for it is here that are to be found the materials from which sociology must be constructed.’1
In Germany, as Raymond Aron has noted,2 sociology was at first rejected on account of its encyclopaedic character. Here, as elsewhere, an attempt was made to define and limit the field of sociology, but in this case by the construction of an abstract science of the ‘forms’ of social life, largely under the influence of Simmel. But alongside these endeavours, there was a continuing interest in historical interpretation and the sociology of culture, stimulated by Marxism. These various interests were united in the writings of Max Weber, in whose work, as in that of Durkheim, we see the same concern to promote a sociological approach within existing disciplines; history, law, economics, politics, comparative religion.
Thus the classical sociologists, and particularly Durkheim, aimed to establish the scope and methods of the discipline, to show its worth by the investigation of major social phenomena, and to associate it closely with the existing social sciences. Later sociology diverged in certain respects from these aims. In the first place, there was, for a time, a renewal of interest in the construction of general theoretical systems. This pre-occupation is open to several objections. It seems an unwise undertaking to attempt the construction of such systems at a stage where there are still very few well established generalisations at a lower level. Furthermore, these theoretical endeavours tend once again towards the isolation of sociology from the other social sciences, or its re-emergence as an ‘imperialistic’ discipline aiming at their subjugation.
Secondly, in the domain of research, there has been some inclination to concentrate upon ‘residual’ subjects, which are not claimed by any of the other social sciences, and which have a ‘social problem’ character. A recent survey of American sociology3 shows that in 1953–4 the two major fields of sociological research, in terms of the number of projects, were urban and community studies, and marriage and the family. The trend in some other countries has been similar.
1Année Sociologique, I, 1898. The Année Sociologique was restarted (for the second time) after 1945 and is still a valuable interdisciplinary journal.
2Raymond Aron, German Sociology English translation, London 1957), p. 1.
3H.Zetterberg (ed.), Sociology in the United States of America (UNESCO. 1956) p. 18.
But this is not the whole story. There is much evidence that the sociological approach has in fact spread widely in the other social sciences. Political science provides the best example. In recent years the numerous studies of political parties (organisation, bureaucracy, leaders), of pressure groups, of elections and electoral behaviour, and of public administration (bureaucracy, elites), have been conducted or inspired by sociologists.1 These studies make up a large part of the current research on political institutions, and it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish between political science and political sociology. In the case of economics, which has its own highly developed theoretical system, the influence of sociology is less marked. However, sociological studies of the organisation of work in industrial enterprises, of industrial relations, and, more recently, of the processes of industrialisation, have contributed substantially to economic knowledge. The growth of economic planning has also brought into greater prominence the sociological aspects of economic behaviour.2
The place of sociology in the study of society can now be more accurately defined, though without any intention of establishing a closed frontier between it and the other sciences. Sociology (with social anthropology) was the first science to be concerned with social life as a whole, with the whole complex system of social institutions and social groups which constitutes a society. The fundamental conception, or directing idea, in sociology is that of social structure. From this follows the sociologist’s interest in aspects of social life which had previously been studied only in an unsystematic way; the family, religion and morals, social stratification, urban life. It was observed above that pre-occupation with some of these ‘residual’ subjects may become excessive, but their investigation is an important part of sociology and properly considered is inseparable from the study of political and economic institutions. Within the fields of the established disciplines, economics, political science, law, etc., the sociological contribution has been to show the connection between the particular institutions being studied and the social structure as a whole, and to insist upon the importance of comparative study. Specialisation is unavoidable in the study of human society, but the sociologist’s view is that it should take place within the framework
1The extent of sociological work in this field can be seen from two trend reports published in Current Sociology; III(4) 1954–5, ‘Electoral Behaviour’ by G.Dupeux, and VI(2) 1957, ‘Political Sociology’ by R.Bendix and S.M. Lipset.
2These instances are referred to only as examples. The relations between sociology and other social sciences will be discussed more fully in Chapter 4.
of a general conception of social structure, and should be associated with an awareness of the variability of social institutions and social structure, based upon wide comparative study. This is not to claim that the sociologist carries around a master plan of social structure which he communicates to the specialist. Most sociologists should themselves be specialists, and they are likely to specialise increasingly in the future, although some will continue to be mainly concerned with the general features of social structure. What is needed is a close collaboration between sociologists and other social scientists; and such collaboration implies both that the sociologist should have some competence in one or other of the special social sciences, and that specialists should have some knowledge of general sociology.
In these matters social anthropologists have had certain advantages, because of the nature of the societies which they have usually studied. Although they have been chiefly interested in kinship and ritual, they have also been able to study the economic and political institutions of tribal societies without fear of trespassing upon the domain of other scholars. More recently, of course, their situation has become more like that of sociologists; with the industrialisation of many tribal societies (as in Africa) there has been a growth of co-operative research involving economists, political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists and others.1
The systematic study of Indian society began during the period of British rule, although in India, as in Europe, there is a long tradition of philosophical reflection upon social problems. The first social sciences to develop were economics and social anthropology. The former was connected with the growth of an industrial and commercial economy, and the latter (it has been suggested)2 with the need for expert advisers in the administration of tribal areas. Sociology has only come to occupy an important place among the social sciences in recent years, and the reasons for its present rapid growth are plain. Since the achievement of independence India has been going through an economic and social revolution, and many of the problems of this revolution can only be solved with the help of sociological enquiry. At the same time the sociologist has a particularly important role in India, because some of the principal
1The work of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute in Rhodesia is a good example.
2R.N.Saksena. ‘Trends in the teaching of sociology and social research in India’, The Journal of Social Sciences (Agra), I(1), 1958, p. 3.
elements in the social structure are those with which sociology is especially concerned. Religion and the caste system are crucial factors in Indian social development, and no social scientist can afford to ignore their effects upon economic progress, political organisation and law. This circumstance is favourable not only to sociological research but also to a close co-operation between the social sciences. Dr. Anstey, in a standard work on economic development1 devotes much attention to the economic effects of caste. Many writers upon Indian politics have observed the influence of religion (the Hindu parties) and especially of caste (the tendency for candidates to be selected from important caste groups, and for castes themselves to develop as pressure groups). Law, and indeed the whole system of social control, is pervaded by religious conceptions and can hardly be studied in isolation from religion. The conditions of Indian society, therefore, dispose the special social sciences towards a sociological approach.
There is another aspect of the study of human society which should be considered here. The great nineteenth century sociologists have been criticised for their encyclopaedic conception of the discipline. But this had one great advantage; it called for a wide knowledge of different types of society and historical periods. Even though sociology was formed in Western Europe, and in large measure as a response to the advent of industrial capitalist society, these early scholars did not confine their interest to the European societies. They regarded the whole range of human societies as constituting the subject matter of their science.2 By contrast, recent sociology has been characterised by a much narrower range of interest. The great majority of sociologists have been engaged in studying very small segments of their own societies. There are several reasons for this change; the great accumulation of knowledge (which has made difficult, and perhaps impossible, the kind of scholarship which the work of Hobhouse or Max Weber displays), the decline in favour of the comparative method, and a wrong conception of specialisation. Sociology has perhaps never been so
1Vera Anstey, The Economic Development of India (4th revised edn. 1952).
2It is true they were inclined to attribute a special importance to the Western societies, as having attained a stage of civilization which other societies would eventually reach after going through similar stages of development. In this way Comte justified the limitation of his investigations to ‘the elite or avant garde of humanity’ (i.e. the European nations). The view was not entirely unfounded in as much as Western science and technology have been the principal factors in transforming the modern world.
ethnocentric as during the past few decades. Fortunately, there are signs that the situation may be changing again; there is a distinct revival of comparative studies, and sociologists are beginning to emulate social anthropologists in their devotion to field-work in alien societies. These comparative studies differ in important respects from those of the nineteenth century; they deal with a more limited range of phenomena, and they depend increasingly upon international co-operation, rather than upon the solitary work of individual scholars. But they are similar in requiring a broad general knowledge of types of social structure and social institution, and a view of human society which goes beyond the particular features of the sociologist’s local community.
These characteristics of Western sociology are relevant to the situation in India. The development of sociology in India is due to much the same factors as at an earlier stage in Europe; the emergence of new social problems resulting from rapid economic and social change, and the desire to control and direct that change. It is natural therefore that the interest of sociologists should be concentrated upon the analysis of Indian social structure. But it would be unfortunate if the study of society came to mean, here also, only the study of one’s own society. There is a great opportunity for the development of comparative studies; first, by taking as a framework for research the problems of social structure and social change in Asian societies, and secondly, since India is going through an industrial revolution similar in many respects to that which occurred earlier in Europe, by undertaking comparative studies of the processes of industrialisation and urbanisation in different structural and cultural contexts.
Human society is, as Comte declared, an extremely complex phenomenon. The scientific study of social phenomena is impossible without specialisation. But it seems more difficult than in the study of the natural world to arrive at a satisfactory division of the subject matter. The present division of labour between the social sciences is based upon traditional, easily perceptible features; e.g. political, economic, religious, family institutions. With the advent of sociology this division was implicitly challenged, but it has nevertheless been reproduced to some extent within sociology itself. In any case, the co-operation between sociology and the special social sciences has required specialisation in sociology along these lines. It may be that this classification, in terms of the ‘elements of social structure’, is the most useful one. But we should bear in mind two other considerations. First, as Gerth and Mills have observed, the autonomy of the separate institutions is limited: ‘In “less developed” societies than the mid-nineteenth century West, as well as in more developed societies any one of the functions we have isolated may not have autonomous institutions serving it. Just what institutional orders exist in a more or less autonomous way is a matter to be investigated in any given society.’1 Secondly, it is apparent that the increasing scientific concern with solving theoretical problems, and the interdisciplinary research which this involves, is bringing about a new division of the subject matter, in terms of types of society, of microscopic and macroscopic phenomena, and so on. For purposes of description and exposition it is still convenient to deal with social phenomena under the traditional headings, but we should not assume that the scientific division of labour will always follow these lines.