SOCIOLOGY

a branch of the science of human behaviour that seeks to discover the causes and effects that arise in social relations among persons and in the intercommunication and interaction among persons and groups. It includes the study of the customs, structures, and institutions that emerge from interaction, of the forces that hold together and weaken them, and of the effects that participation in groups and organizations have on the behaviour and character of persons. Sociology is also concerned with the basic nature of human society, locally and universally, and with the various processes that preserve continuity and produce change. It is social life that is distinctive in the regulation of behaviour in human beings; the human animal does not have such instincts as serve to guide the behaviour of lower animals, and he is therefore more dependent on social organization than is any other species. Institutionalized social forms therefore are assumed to play the major part in influencing human actions, and it is the task of sociology to discover how these forms operate on the person, as well as how they are established, develop, elaborate, interact with one another, and decay and disappear. Among the most important of such structures is the family, the subject of an important field of sociology. The peer group, the community, the economic and political orders, various voluntary associations, and special organizations such as the church and the military are of particular importance in this inquiry. Though sociology can be considered as a part of the Western tradition of rational inquiry inaugurated by the ancient Greeks, it is specifically the offspring of 18th- and 19th-century philosophy and has been viewed as a reaction against the frequently nonscientific approaches of classical philosophy and folklore to social phenomena. It was for a time presented as a part of moral philosophy, which covered the subject matter that eventually also became the concern of the various social sciences that are now separate from moral philosophy. Some aspects of other fields remain of interest to the sociologist. Although psychology has traditionally centred its interest on the individual and his internal mental mechanisms, and although sociology has given its major attention to collective aspects of human behaviour, the two disciplines share the subfield of social psychology. The relation of sociology to social anthropology is even closer, and until about the first quarter of the 20th century the two subjects were usually combined in one department, differentiated mainly by the emphasis of the anthropologists on the sociology of preliterate peoples. Recently even this distinction has been fading, as social anthropologists have increasingly added studies of various aspects of modern society to their field of interest. Political science and economics had much of their early development in the practical interests of nations and for a time evolved separately from basic sociology; but recently in both fields an awareness of the potential utility of some infusion of sociological concepts and methods has brought relations closer. A somewhat similar situation has also been developing in respect to law, education, and religion and to a lesser extent in such contrasting fields as engineering and architecture. Nineteenth-century sociology, influenced by the successes of biology and evolutionary theory, took an interest in resemblances between men and lower animalsin their having, for example, similar instinctsand also in the parallels between biological and social evolution. These interests have declined, but sociology continues to share with the other sciences some interest in ecology, behavioral genetics, and questions of fertility and mortality as they relate to population studies. There is also a conviction among sociologists that contact between physiology and sociology is necessary to avoid errors of ignorance in both fields. the human behavioral science that investigates the nature, causes, and effects of social relations among individuals and between individuals and groups. It also studies social customs, structures, and institutions, as well as the effects on individuals of participation in groups and organizations. Although the analysis of society has been a part of Western thought since the ancient Greeks, the modern science did not develop until the 18th and 19th centuries. Along with other social sciences, it originally was an aspect of moral philosophy and was strongly influenced by theories of biology and evolution. Early sociologists, for example, sought parallels between social and biological organisms and tried to apply Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to society. Although August Comte created the word sociologie in 1838, nearly 60 years passed before it gained the status of scientific specialization. In the late 1800s mile Durkheim defined the boundaries of sociology in ways that differentiated it from fields such as psychology and biology. He proposed that certain distinctive qualities, or social factssuch as group feelings and beliefs, rituals, and institutionsresult from social intercourse and are not found in individuals, and that these facts exert control over individuals' actions and behaviour. The first academic department of sociology was created by Albion Small at the University of Chicago in 1892, and by the late 1890s many educational institutions offered courses in the subject. International sociological associations and publications then appeared, and the science grew in professional and scientific status. Today sociology has come to have many applications in government, industry, education, and social services. Modern sociology involves a variety of approaches that are often used in conjunction with one another. Robert Merton, Talcott Parsons, Pitirim A. Sorokin, and others were among the first to investigate the nature of social organizations and their effects on human behaviour (called functional-structural analysis). Parsons explored what social systems need to sustain themselves and also developed a classification of social structures by distinguishing their particular functions. The field of group dynamics derived from the work of Kurt Lewin, who studied small social units such as families and professional groups and drew connections between what he called the individual's psychological life space and social space. Symbolic interactionism, which was derived from the works of John Dewey, George H. Mead, and Charles Cooley, holds that an individual's concept of the self is an internalization of social processes. Economic determinism, which was derived from the thought of Karl Marx primarily by the sociologist C. Wright Mills, supports the idea of a power elite in society. An opposing view, that class conflicts are produced by differences in ideology, was developed largely by Karl Mannheim. A later development has been the attempt to use various types of mathematical analysis in the study of society. Among the principal concerns of modern sociology is that of developing more accurate and verifiable methodologies. Early sociologists tended to propose a theory first and then gather facts to prove it, or to rely on data that can be misleading. In the 1920s Robert E. Park evolved a more inductive approach in which theory grew out of a body of carefully assembled information. Modern sociologists use several methods, including controlled experimentation, direct and indirect observation, and statistical analysis. Additional reading Among older titles of major significance, generally considered classics, are W.G. Sumner, The Folkways (1907, reissued 1940); C.H. Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order (1902, reissued 1967); G.H. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society, ed. by C.W. Morris (1934); E. Faris, The Nature of Human Nature (1937); R.E. Park and E.W. Burgess, Introduction to the Science of Sociology (1921, reissued 1969); and W.F. Ogburn, Social Change with Respect to Culture and Original Nature, new ed. (1950; suppl. ch., 1964). A comprehensive summary of early sociological theory is available in H.E. Barnes (ed.), An Introduction to the History of Sociology (1948). The following titles provide excellent coverage of the main directions and subfields of contemporary sociology: R.E.L. Faris (ed.), Handbook of Modern Sociology (1964); R.K. Merton, L. Broom, and L.S. Cottrell (eds.), Sociology Today, 2 vol. (1959, reissued 1965); G.D. Gurvitch and W.E. Moore (eds.), Twentieth Century Sociology (1945); J.G. March (ed.), Handbook of Organizations (1965); and N.J. Smelser and J.A. Davis (eds.), Sociology (1969). Two influential general texts are L. Broom and P. Selznick, Sociology, 4th ed. (1968); and G.A. Lundberg et al., Sociology, 4th ed. (1968). Leading books treating communities and societies as wholes are Talcott Parsons, Societies: Evolutionary and Comparative Perspectives (1966); I.T. Sanders, The Community, 2nd ed. (1966); R.K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, rev. ed. (1957); G.C. Homans, Social Behaviour: Its Elementary Forms (1961); G.E. Lenski, Human Societies: A Macrolevel Introduction to Sociology (1970); and A.L. Stinchcombe, Constructing Social Theories (1968). The technical and statistical methods used in sociology are presented in E.F. Borgatta (ed.), Sociological Methodology (1968); and J.H. Mueller, K.F. Schuessler, and H.L. Costner, Statistical Reasoning in Sociology, 2nd ed. (1970). Ernest Gellner, Soviet and Western Anthropology (1980), illustrates differing approaches to anthropological study.