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THREE
CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGISTS
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Introduction
to the Module
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Documents
Included in this Classical
Sociologists Module
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The
Three Fathers of Sociology
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| Sociology began in the
mid nineteenth century in the middle of the European Industrial revolution. |
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In many ways it was in response to
that process, as journalists remarked on the exploitation, poverty, oppression
and misery of the working class. |
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| Karl Marx did not consider
himself a sociologist, but analysed revolutionary social change, and saw
the most important dynamic as being the conflict between the workers and
the owners of the factories. |
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From his writings, one of the three
major perspectives of sociology developed, the conflict approach.
He himself did not invent the term nor the perspective. |
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| Max Weber opposed the
materialist approach of Marx, and stated that the driving factor in social
change was the shirt in ideas, values and beliefs, arising from the Calvinist
or protestant reformation. |
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Although he did not invent the term
or the approach, Weber’s writings contributed to what is now the symbolic
interaction perspective. |
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Durkheim also opposed Marx, but in different
ways, looking at the notion of a “social fact” suggesting that it referred
to statistical rates of any activity, in contrast to the personal activity
of an individual.
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not try to explain social events with reference to individual events, a
method known as reductionism. |
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Although he did not invent the term
or the approach, Durkheim’s writings contributed to what is now known
as functionalism. |
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While huge arguments arose in the social
sciences between proponents of these three approaches, the post modern
approach as taken in this web site suggests that all three approaches are
valid, and that we get a more in depth view of society by using all three
at the same time.
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2008.09.21