Sociology. Anthony Giddens
Martineau is now credited with introducing sociology to Britain through her translation of Comte’s founding treatise, Positive Philosophy (see Rossi 1973). In addition, she conducted a first-hand, systematic study of American society during her extensive travels throughout the United States in the 1830s, the subject of her book Society in America (Martineau 1962 [1837]). Martineau is significant to sociologists today for several reasons.
First, she argued that, when one studies a society, one must focus on all its aspects, including key political, religious and social institutions. Second, she insisted that an analysis of a society must include an understanding of women’s lives, something that became commonplace in mainstream sociology with feminist interventions only in the 1970s. Third, she was the first to turn a sociological eye on previously ignored issues, among them marriage, children, domestic and religious life, and race relations. As she once wrote: ‘The nursery, the boudoir, and the kitchen are all excellent schools in which to learn the morals and manners of a people’ (1962 [1837]). Finally, she argued that sociologists should do more than just observe; they should also act in ways to benefit a society. As a result, Martineau was an active proponent of both women’s rights and the emancipation of slaves.
W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963)
Du Bois was an American sociologist, historian and black civil rights activist, the first African American to gain a doctorate from Harvard (in 1895), and professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University. His work covered empirical studies, philosophy, sociological theory and history and is characterized by three highly significant books: The Philadelphia Negro (1899), The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and Black Reconstruction in America (1935).
In Souls, Du Bois focused on the failure of the abolition of slavery in the USA in the 1860s to bring about racial equality. He argued that black people in Southern states lived with a ‘double consciousness’; being both black and American, they should be able to be without ‘being cursed and spit upon by his [sic] fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face’ (Du Bois 1903: 2–3). He saw the main problem of the coming twentieth century was that of the ‘color line’, the segregation of whites and blacks. His meticulous empirical sociological study of a poor, largely black district of Philadelphia (2007 [1899]) was an ambitious mapping of urban poverty. Du Bois showed that white racism effectively set limits to the sectors and occupations that black people could enter, thus empirically falsifying the idea that their poverty was due to laziness and a lack of innate intelligence. Most scholars now acknowledge this study as a key forerunner to the work of the Chicago School of Sociology (see chapter 13, ‘Cities and Urban Life’).
Finally, Lemert (2000: 244) argues that the Marxist influence on Du Bois’s writing is strongest in Black Reconstruction, which traces post-emancipation structured relations between workers and plantation owners. In this, he saw that the color line ‘cut through the laboring class as well as between the labor class and the propertied’. Du Bois’s work was largely absent from the history of sociology, even in the USA, but interest in it has rapidly increased as a result of postcolonial scholarship and attempts to decolonize sociology.
Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406)
The Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun was born in what is today Tunisia and is famous for his historical, sociological and political-economic studies. He wrote many books, the most widely known of which is a six-volume work, the Muqaddimah (‘Introduction’), completed in 1378. This is viewed by some scholars today as essentially an early foundational work of sociology (see Alatas 2006). The Muqaddimah criticized existing historical approaches and methods as dealing only with description, claiming instead the discovery of a new ‘science of social organization’, or ‘science of society’, capable of getting at the underlying meaning of events.
Ibn Khaldun devised a theory of social conflict based on understanding the central characteristics of the ‘nomadic’ and ‘sedentary’ societies of his time. Central to this theory was the concept of ‘group feeling’ or solidarity (asabiyyah). Groups and societies with a strong group feeling were able to dominate and control those with weaker forms of internal solidarity. Ibn Khaldun developed these ideas in an attempt to explain the rise and decline of Maghribian and Arab states, and in this sense he may be seen as studying the process of state-formation – itself a main concern of modern, Western historical sociology. Nomadic Bedouin tribes tended towards a very strong group feeling, which enabled them to overrun and dominate the weaker sedentary town-dwellers and establish new dynasties. However, the Bedouin then became settled into more urbanized lifestyles and their previously strong group feeling and military force diminished, thus leaving them open to attack from external enemies once again. This completed a long cycle in the rise and decline of states. Although Western historians and sociologists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century referred to Ibn Khaldun’s work, only in very recent years has it again come to be seen as potentially significant.
THINKING CRITICALLY
Do some online research into one of these three figures. What explanations are offered for their work being neglected by sociologists for most of the twentieth century?
Functionalism emphasizes the importance of moral consensus in maintaining order and stability. Moral consensus exists when most people in a society share the same values. Functionalists regard order and balance as the normal state of society, and this social equilibrium is grounded in the moral consensus among society’s members. For instance, Durkheim argued that religious beliefs reaffirm people’s adherence to core social values, thereby contributing to the maintenance of social cohesion.
Until the 1960s, functionalism was probably the leading theoretical tradition in sociology, particularly in the United States. Talcott Parsons (1902–79) and Robert K. Merton (1910–2003) were two of its most prominent exponents. Merton’s version of functionalism has been particularly influential. He distinguished between manifest and latent functions. Manifest functions are those known to, and intended by, the participants in a specific type of social activity. Latent functions are consequences of that activity of which the participants are unaware. For instance, Merton examined the rain dance performed by the Hopi tribe of Arizona and New Mexico. The Hopi believe that this ceremony will bring the rain they need for their crops (a manifest function). But the rain dance, Merton argued, also has the effect of promoting group cohesion of Hopi society (its latent function). A major part of sociological explanations, according to Merton, consists in uncovering the latent functions of intentional social activities and institutions.
Merton also distinguished between functions and dysfunctions. To look for the dysfunctional aspects of social behaviour means focusing on features of social life that challenge the existing order of things. For example, it is mistaken to suppose that religion is always functional and that it only contributes to social cohesion. When religious groups disagree with one another the result can be major social conflict, causing widespread social disruption. Thus, wars have often been fought between religious communities – as can be seen in the struggles between Protestants and Catholics in Europe or between Sunni and Shia Muslims in the Middle East.
Since the late 1970s the popularity of functionalism has waned as its limitations have become apparent. Though it is not true of Merton, many functionalist thinkers focused on stability and social order, minimizing social divisions and inequalities based on factors such as class, ethnicity and gender. Functionalism also placed too little emphasis on the role that creative social action can play within society. Many critics argued that functional analysis attributes to societies social qualities that they do not have. For instance, many functionalists often wrote as though whole societies have ‘needs’ and ‘purposes’, even though these concepts make sense only when applied to individual human beings. Just as significantly, in the 1960s and 1970s there emerged a wave of so-called new social movements – involving, among others, students, environmentalists and peace movements – which functional analysis seemed particularly ill-equipped to understand and explain.