What Nineteenth Century Event Experienced by Karl Marx Gave Rise to His Ideas About Social Class?
Learning Objectives
By the end of this department, you will exist able to:
- Explain why sociology emerged when it did
- Depict how sociology became a separate bookish discipline
Since ancient times, people have been fascinated by the relationship between individuals and the societies to which they belong. Many topics studied in modern sociology were also studied past aboriginal philosophers in their desire to depict an ideal society, including theories of social conflict, economics, social cohesion, and power (Hannoum 2003).
In the thirteenth century, Ma Tuan-Lin, a Chinese historian, starting time recognized social dynamics as an underlying component of historical development in his seminal encyclopedia, General Study of Literary Remains. The adjacent century saw the emergence of the historian some consider to be the globe's start sociologist: Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) of Tunisia. He wrote about many topics of interest today, setting a foundation for both modern sociology and economics, including a theory of social conflict, a comparison of nomadic and sedentary life, a clarification of political economic system, and a report connecting a tribe'south social cohesion to its capacity for power (Hannoum 2003).
In the eighteenth century, Historic period of Enlightenment philosophers developed full general principles that could exist used to explain social life. Thinkers such equally John Locke, Voltaire, Immanuel Kant, and Thomas Hobbes responded to what they saw as social ills by writing on topics that they hoped would lead to social reform. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) wrote about women's conditions in social club. Her works were long ignored by the male academic structure, but since the 1970s, Wollstonecraft has been widely considered the first feminist thinker of consequence.
The early nineteenth century saw great changes with the Industrial Revolution, increased mobility, and new kinds of employment. Information technology was likewise a time of dandy social and political upheaval with the rise of empires that exposed many people—for the commencement time—to societies and cultures other than their own. Millions of people moved into cities and many people turned away from their traditional religious beliefs.
Creating a Discipline
Auguste Comte (1798–1857)—The Father of Folklore
Auguste Comte is considered past many to exist the begetter of folklore. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
The term sociology was offset 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 past Auguste Comte (1798–1857). Comte originally studied to exist an engineer, but later became a pupil of social philosopher Claude Henri de Rouvroy Comte de Saint-Simon (1760–1825). They both thought that social scientists could study society using the same scientific methods utilized in natural sciences. Comte likewise believed in the potential of social scientists to work toward the betterment of guild. He held that one time scholars identified the laws that governed gild, sociologists could address bug such as poor pedagogy and poverty (Abercrombie et al. 2000).
Comte named the scientific written report of social patterns positivism. He described his philosophy in a series of books called The Form in Positive Philosophy (1830–1842) and A Full general View of Positivism (1848). He believed that using scientific methods to reveal the laws by which societies and individuals interact would conductor in a new "positivist" age of history. While the field and its terminology have grown, sociologists nonetheless believe in the positive impact of their work.
Harriet Martineau (1802–1876)—the Outset Adult female Sociologist
Harriet Martineau was a writer who addressed a wide range of social science issues. She was an early on observer of social practices, including economics, social course, religion, suicide, authorities, and women'due south rights. Her writing career began in 1931 with a serial of stories titled Illustrations of Political Economy, in which she tried to educate ordinary people about the principles of economics (Johnson 2003).
Martineau was the first to interpret Comte'southward writing from French to English and thereby introduced sociology to English-speaking scholars (Hill 1991). She is also credited with the first systematic methodological international comparisons of social institutions in two of her most famous sociological works: Lodge in America (1837) and Hindsight of Western Travel (1838). Martineau institute the workings of capitalism at odds with the professed moral principles of people in the The states; she pointed out the faults with the free enterprise system in which workers were exploited and impoverished while concern owners became wealthy. She further noted that the belief in all beingness created equal was inconsistent with the lack of women's rights. Much like Mary Wollstonecraft, Martineau was often discounted in her own fourth dimension by the male domination of academic sociology.
Karl Marx (1818–1883)
Karl Marx was one of the founders of folklore. His ideas about social conflict are still relevant today. (Photograph courtesy of John Mayall/Wikimedia Eatables)
Karl Marx (1818–1883) was a German philosopher and economist. In 1848 he and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) coauthored the Communist Manifesto. This book is one of the nearly influential political manuscripts in history. Information technology also presents Marx's theory of society, which differed from what Comte proposed.
Marx rejected Comte's positivism. He believed that societies grew and changed as a consequence of the struggles of different social classes over the means of production. At the time he was developing his theories, the Industrial Revolution and the rise of capitalism led to keen disparities in wealth between the owners of the factories and workers. Commercialism, an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of appurtenances and the ways to produce them, grew in many nations.
Marx predicted that inequalities of capitalism would become so extreme that workers would somewhen revolt. This would atomic number 82 to the collapse of commercialism, which would exist replaced by communism. Communism is an economical system nether which there is no individual or corporate ownership: everything is owned communally and distributed every bit needed. Marx believed that communism was a more than equitable arrangement than capitalism.
While his economic predictions may not have come truthful in the time frame he predicted, Marx'due south idea that social conflict leads to change in society is withal one of the major theories used in modern sociology.
Herbert Spencer (1820–1903)
In 1873, the English philosopher Herbert Spencer published The Study of Sociology, the first volume with the term "folklore" in the championship. Spencer rejected much of Comte'southward philosophy equally well as Marx'southward theory of grade struggle and his back up of communism. Instead, he favored a grade of government that immune marketplace forces to command capitalism. His work influenced many early on sociologists including Émile Durkheim (1858–1917).
Georg Simmel (1858–1918)
Georg Simmel was a German art critic who wrote widely on social and political issues every bit well. Simmel took an anti-positivism opinion and addressed topics such as social disharmonize, the function of coin, individual identity in city life, and the European fear of outsiders (Stapley 2010). Much of his piece of work focused on the micro-level theories, and information technology analyzed the dynamics of ii-person and 3-person groups. His work likewise emphasized individual civilisation equally the creative capacities of individuals. Simmel'due south contributions to sociology are not often included in academic histories of the bailiwick, perhaps overshadowed by his contemporaries Durkheim, Mead, and Weber (Ritzer and Goodman 2004).
Émile Durkheim (1858–1917)
Durkheim helped plant folklore every bit a formal academic subject area by establishing the first European section of sociology at the Academy of Bordeaux in 1895 and by publishing his Rules of the Sociological Method in 1895. In another important work, Sectionalization of Labour in Society (1893), Durkheim laid out his theory on how societies transformed from a primitive state into a capitalist, industrial order. According to Durkheim, people rise to their proper levels in lodge based on merit.
Durkheim believed that sociologists could report objective "social facts" (Poggi 2000). He also believed that through such studies it would be possible to determine if a society was "good for you" or "pathological." He saw good for you societies as stable, while pathological societies experienced a breakdown in social norms between individuals and order.
In 1897, Durkheim attempted to demonstrate the effectiveness of his rules of social enquiry when he published a work titled Suicide. Durkheim examined suicide statistics in different police force districts to research differences between Catholic and Protestant communities. He attributed the differences to socioreligious forces rather than to individual or psychological causes.
George Herbert Mead (1863–1931)
George Herbert Mead was a philosopher and sociologist whose work focused on the ways in which the heed and the self were developed as a result of social processes (Cronk n.d.). He argued that how an individual comes to view himself or herself is based to a very large extent on interactions with others. Mead called specific individuals that impacted a person'southward life significant others, and he also conceptualized "generalized others" as the organized and generalized attitude of a social group. Mead's piece of work is closely associated with the symbolic interactionist approach and emphasizes the micro-level of analysis.
Max Weber (1864–1920)
Prominent sociologist Max Weber established a folklore department in Frg at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich in 1919. Weber wrote on many topics related to folklore including political change in Russia and social forces that impact manufactory workers. He is known all-time for his 1904 book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. The theory that Weber sets forth in this book is still controversial. Some believe that Weber argued that the beliefs of many Protestants, especially Calvinists, led to the creation of capitalism. Others translate it every bit simply challenge that the ideologies of commercialism and Protestantism are complementary.
Weber believed that it was difficult, if non impossible, to use standard scientific methods to accurately predict the behavior of groups every bit people hoped to exercise. They argued that the influence of civilization on homo behavior had to be taken into business relationship. This fifty-fifty applied to the researchers themselves, who, they believed, should be aware of how their own cultural biases could influence their research. To deal with this problem, Weber and Dilthey introduced the concept of verstehen , a High german word that means to understand in a deep fashion. In seeking verstehen, exterior observers of a social world—an entire culture or a pocket-size setting—attempt to understand it from an insider's point of view.
In his book The Nature of Social Action (1922), Weber described sociology as striving to "interpret the meaning of social activity and thereby give a causal explanation of the way in which action gain and the effects it produces." He and other like-minded sociologists proposed a philosophy of antipositivism whereby social researchers would strive for subjectivity as they worked to represent social processes, cultural norms, and societal values. This arroyo led to some research methods whose aim was not to generalize or predict (traditional in science), simply to systematically gain an in-depth understanding of social worlds.
The unlike approaches to research based on positivism or antipositivism are often considered the foundation for the differences establish today between quantitative sociology and qualitative folklore. Quantitative sociology uses statistical methods such equally surveys with large numbers of participants. Researchers analyze data using statistical techniques to meet if they can uncover patterns of human behavior. Qualitative folklore seeks to understand human being behavior by learning about it through in-depth interviews, focus groups, and analysis of content sources (like books, magazines, journals, and popular media).
Should We Raise the Minimum Wage?
In the 2014 Land of the Union Address, President Obama called on Congress to heighten the national minimum wage, and he signed an executive order putting this into effect for individuals working on new federal service contracts. Congress did not laissez passer legislation to alter the national minimum wage more broadly. The result has become a national controversy, with various economists taking different sides on the issue, and public protests existence staged by several groups of minimum-wage workers.
Opponents of raising the minimum wage debate that some workers would become larger paychecks while others would lose their jobs, and companies would be less likely to hire new workers because of the increased cost of paying them (Bernstein 2014; cited in CNN).
Proponents of raising the minimum wage contend that some job loss would be greatly starting time by the positive furnishings on the economic system of depression-wage workers having more income (Hassett 2014; cited in CNN).
Sociologists may consider the minimum wage outcome from differing perspectives likewise. How much of an touch would a minimum wage heighten have for a single female parent? Some might report the economic effects, such as her ability to pay bills and keep food on the tabular array. Others might look at how reduced economic stress could improve family relationships. Some sociologists might inquiry the impact on the condition of modest business owners. These could all exist examples of public sociology, a co-operative of sociology that strives to bring sociological dialogue to public forums. The goals of public sociology are to increase understanding of the social factors that underlie social problems and aid in finding solutions. According to Michael Burawoy (2005), the challenge of public sociology is to appoint multiple publics in multiple ways.
Summary
Sociology was adult equally a way to written report and try to understand the changes to society brought on past the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Some of the earliest sociologists idea that societies and individuals' roles in society could exist studied using the same scientific methodologies that were used in the natural sciences, while others believed that is was incommunicable to predict man behavior scientifically, and still others debated the value of such predictions. Those perspectives continue to be represented inside sociology today.
Curt ANSWER QUESTIONS
- What practice you make of Karl Marx's contributions to sociology? What perceptions of Marx have you been exposed to in your lodge, and how do those perceptions influence your views?
- Practice you tend to place more value on qualitative or quantitative enquiry? Why? Does information technology matter what topic you are studying?
Glossary
- antipositivism
- the view that social researchers should strive for subjectivity every bit they worked to represent social processes, cultural norms, and societal values
- generalized others
- the organized and generalized attitude of a social group
- positivism
- the scientific study of social patterns
- qualitative sociology
- in-depth interviews, focus groups, and/or analysis of content sources every bit the source of its data
- quantitative sociology
- statistical methods such equally surveys with large numbers of participants
- meaning others
- specific individuals that touch on a person'southward life
- verstehen
- a German word that ways to empathise in a deep mode
Further Research
Many sociologists helped shape the subject. To acquire more well-nigh prominent sociologists and how they changed sociology bank check out http://openstaxcollege.org/l/ferdinand-toennies.
References
Abercrombie, Nicholas, Stephen Colina, and Bryan Due south. Turner. 2000. The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology. London: Penguin.
Buroway, Michael. 2005. "2004 Presidential Address: For Public Sociology." American Sociological Review 70 (February): iv–28. Retrieved December thirty, 2014 (http://burawoy.berkeley.edu/Public%20Sociology,%20Live/Burawoy.pdf).
Cablevision Network News (CNN). 2014. "Should the minimum wage be raised?" CNN Money. Retrieved December 30, 2014 (http://money.cnn.com/infographic/pf/low-wage-worker/).
Cronk, George. n.d. "George Herbert Mead." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: A Peer-Reviewed Bookish Resource. Retrieved October 14, 2014 (http://world wide web.iep.utm.edu/mead/).
Durkheim, Émile. 1964 [1895]. The Rules of Sociological Method, edited by J. Mueller, E. George and East. Caitlin. eighth ed. Translated by Southward. Solovay. New York: Gratis Press.
Fauré, Christine, Jacques Guilhaumou, Jacques Vallier, and Françoise Weil. 2007 [1999]. Des Manuscrits de Sieyès, 1773–1799, Volumes I and II. Paris: Champion.
Hannoum, Abdelmajid. 2003. Translation and the Colonial Imaginary: Ibn Khaldun Orientalist. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University. Retrieved January 19, 2012 (http://world wide web.jstor.org/pss/3590803).
Hill, Michael. 1991. "Harriet Martineau." Women in Sociology: A Bio-Bibliographic Sourcebook, edited by Mary Jo Deegan. New York: Greenwood Press.
Johnson, Bethany. 2003. "Harriet Martineau: Theories and Contributions to Sociology." Education Portal. Retrieved October 14, 2014 (http://teaching-portal.com/university/lesson/harriet-martineau-theories-and-contributions-to-folklore.html#lesson).
Poggi, Gianfranco. 2000. Durkheim. Oxford, Great britain: Oxford Academy Press.
Ritzer, George, and Goodman, Douglas. 2004. Sociological Theory, 6th Edition. New York: McGraw Hill Education.
Stapley, Pierre. 2010. "Georg Simmel." Cardiff University School of Social Sciences. Retrieved Oct 21, 2014 (http://www.cf.ac.united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland/socsi/undergraduate/introsoc/simmel.html).
U.S. Congress Articulation Economic Committee. 2010. Women and the Economy, 2010: 25 Years of Progress But Challenges Remain. August. Washington, DC: Congressional Press Office. Retrieved January 19, 2012 (http://jec.senate.gov/public/?a=Files.Serve&File_id=8be22cb0-8ed0-4a1a-841b-aa91dc55fa81).
Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/sociology/chapter/the-history-of-sociology/
0 Response to "What Nineteenth Century Event Experienced by Karl Marx Gave Rise to His Ideas About Social Class?"
Post a Comment