Abstract
There are many views about what sociology is and what its business should be, all of them bound up with questions about the nature of its subject matter. Apart from the vague ‘study of society’ that’s probably the most common fall-back position, sociology can be defined in a number of complementary ways. At its most basic it is the study of patterns in human behaviour. Among other things this means that sociology pays particular attention to established relationships between humans, which is why the study of institutions and how they work has always been fundamental to the sociological enterprise. Sociology has, however, always been as interested in individuals as in collectivities. It is particularly concerned with the many ways in which individuals are influenced by human factors outside their immediate environment or control. Finally, sociology has always been concerned with the shared ways in which human beings interpret their lives, with meaning.
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Notes
F. Tönnies, Community and Association (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955 [18871);
E. Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society (London: Macmillan, 1984 [18931);
G. Simmel, ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’, in K. H. Wolff (ed.), The Sociology of Georg Simmel (New York: Free Press, 1950).
E. Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society; and Suicide: A Study in Sociology (Londo: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952 [1897]);
M. Weber, ‘Science as a Vocation’, ‘The Social Psychology of the World Religions’ and ‘The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism’, in H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1948).
A. Giddens (ed.), Emile Durkheim: Selected Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972) pp. 203–18.
B. Ballis Lal, ‘The “Chicago School” of American Sociology, Symbolic Interactionism, and Race Relations Theory’, in J. Rex and D. Mason (eds), Theories of Race and Ethnic Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); and The Romance of Culture in an Urban Civilization: Robert E. Park on Race and Ethnic Relations in Cities (London: Routledge, 1990).
See the works of G. W. Stocking: Race, Culture and Evolution (New York: Free Press, 1968); Victorian Anthropology (New York: Free Press, 1987); and his recent edited collection, Colonial Situations (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991).
J. H. Goldthorpe, On Sociology: Numbers, Narratives and the Integration of Research and Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) pp. 4–6, 259–60. For an account of the relationship between sociology and science which differs from the one I offer, see M. Williams, Science and Social Science: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2000).
See M. Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 2nd edn (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1976) p. 182.
I. A. Richter (ed.), The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952) p. 9.
M. S. Archer, ‘The Dubious Guarantees of Social Science: a Reply to Wallerstein’, International Sociology, vol. 13 (1998) pp. 5–17.
A. Giddens, Runaway World: How Globalisation is Reshaping Our Lives (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999).
C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959) p. 77.
A. Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972) pp. 215–50; and A. Schutz and T. Luckmann, The Structures of the Life-World (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973) pp. 3–20. Apropos Bourdieu, see R. Jenkins, Pierre Bourdieu (London: Routledge, 1992) pp. 45–65.
Z. Bauman, Thinking Sociologically (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990) p. 10;
P. L. Berger, Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Introduction (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1966).
R. Jenkins, Hightown Rules: Growing Up in a Belfast Housing Estate (Leicester: National Youth Bureau, 1982); and Lads, Citizens and Ordinary Kids: Working Class Youth Life-styles in Belfast (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983).
R. Jenkins, Lads, Citizens and Ordinary Kids, p. 10; and Social Identity (London: Routledge, 1996) pp. 11–18.
My favourite example is E. Schegloff, ‘Sequencing in Conversational Openings’, American Anthropologist, vol. 70 (1968) pp. 1075–95.
M. Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. G. Roth and C. Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978) pp. 18–22.
B. Ankerloo and S. Clark (eds), The Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, vol. 4: The Period of the Witch Trials (London: Athlone Press, 1999); B. Ankerloo and G. Henningsen (eds), Early Modern Witchcraft: Centres and Peripheries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990); B. P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe, 2nd edn (London: Longman, 1995).
On witchcraft as an underground religion, see M. A. Murray, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921). On the witchcraft persecutions as misogyny, see M. Hester, Lewd Women and Wicked Witches: A Study of the Dynamics of Male Domination (London: Routledge, 1992).
On the distinction between explanation and interpretation in social science, see M. Williams, Science and Social Science, chapters 3–5; P. Winch, The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958).
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© 2002 Richard Jenkins
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Jenkins, R. (2002). What is Sociology?. In: Foundations of Sociology. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-87835-2_2
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