The Intellectual Ideas That Went into the Making of Sociology

The making of sociology was not a sudden event. It grew out of a specific set of intellectual currents — ideas about evolution, progress, science, and society — that came together in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. Understanding these ideas matters because they shaped not only what sociology studies but how it studies it.

The Evolutionary Vision of Society

The most powerful influence on early sociology came from the scientific theories of natural evolution. Alongside this, early travellers, colonial administrators, sociologists, and social anthropologists had been producing accounts of pre-modern societies. Putting these two streams together, early sociologists sought to categorise societies into types and to distinguish stages in social development.

This project of classification reappears in the 19th century in the works of the early sociologists Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, and Herbert Spencer. On the basis of this evolutionary thinking, societies were classified into broad types:

• Pre-modern societies — hunters and gatherers, pastoral societies, agrarian societies, and non-industrial civilisations.
• Modern societies — industrialised societies.

This evolutionary vision carried a heavy assumption: that the West was necessarily the most advanced and civilised. Non-western societies were often seen as barbaric and less developed. The Indian colonial experience has to be understood in this light. Indian sociology reflects a tension that goes far back to the history of British colonialism and the intellectual and ideological response to it. Perhaps because of this backdrop, Indian sociology has been particularly thoughtful and reflexive about its own practice — a theme you will take up in greater detail in the book Understanding Society.

Society as an Organism

Darwin's ideas about organic evolution were a dominant influence on early sociological thought. Society was often compared with a living organism, and efforts were made to trace its growth through stages comparable to those of organic life. This way of looking at society — as a system of parts, each part playing a given function — influenced the study of social institutions like the family or the school, and of structures such as stratification.

This point is worth pausing on. The intellectual ideas that went into the making of sociology have a direct bearing on how sociology studies empirical reality. The organic analogy, for instance, pushed sociologists to ask what function each institution performs for the whole — a question that still shapes sociological analysis today.

The Enlightenment and the Scientific Study of Human Affairs

The Enlightenment, a European intellectual movement of the late 17th and 18th centuries, emphasised reason and individualism. It was also a period of great advancement in scientific knowledge, and with it came a growing conviction that the methods of the natural sciences should and could be extended to the study of human affairs.

This conviction changed how social problems were perceived. Take poverty: so far seen as a 'natural phenomenon', it began to be seen as a 'social problem' caused by human ignorance or exploitation. And if poverty was caused by human action, it could be studied and redressed. One way of studying it was through the social survey, which rested on the belief that human phenomena can be classified and measured. (You will discuss the social survey in chapter 5.)

Faith in Progress …