Wikipedia:Sociology

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Sociology is a branch of social science that uses systematic methods of empirical investigation[1][2] and critical analysis[3] to develop and refine a body of knowledge about human social structure and activity, often with the goal of applying such knowledge to the pursuit of social welfare. Its subject matter ranges from the micro level of face-to-face interaction to the macro level of societies at large.

Sociology is a broad discipline in terms of both methodology and subject matter. Its traditional focuses have included social relations, social stratification, social interaction, religion, culture and deviance, and its approaches have included both qualitative and quantitative research techniques. As much of what humans do fits under the category of social structure or social activity, sociology has gradually expanded its focus to further subjects, such as the study of the media, health disparities, the internet, and even the role of social activity in the creation of scientific knowledge. The range of social scientific methods has also been broadly expanded. The cultural turn of the 1960s brought increasingly hermeneutic and interpretive approaches to the study of society. Conversely, recent decades have seen the rise of new mathematically rigorous approaches, such as social network analysis.

Contents

History

Auguste Comte

Sociological reasoning is much older than the term “sociology.” Sociology, including economic, political, and cultural systems, has proto-sociological origins in the common stock of human knowledge and philosophy. Social analysis has been carried out by scholars and philosophers from at least as early as the time of Plato.

The word "sociologie" was first used in 1780 by the French essayist Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (1748-1836) in an unpublished manuscript.[4] The word was later used in 1838 by the French thinker Auguste Comte.[5] Comte had earlier used the term "social physics", but that term had subsequently been appropriated by others, notably the Belgian statistician Adolphe Quetelet. Comte hoped to unify history, psychology and economics. He believed that society's acquisition of knowledge passed through three basic stages: theological, metaphysical, and positive. Comte argued that if society could grasp the structure of this progress, it could prescribe suitable remedies for social ills.[6] Though Comte is sometimes regarded as the "Father of Sociology",[6] the discipline was formally established by the functionalist positivist, Émile Durkheim, who developed the first European academic department.

Émile Durkheim

Key figures

Sociology later evolved as an academic response to the challenges of modernity and modernization, such as industrialization and urbanization, that emerged in the early 19th century. Classical theorists of sociology from the late 19th and early 20th centuries include Alexis de Tocqueville, Vilfredo Pareto, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Ludwig Gumplowicz, Ferdinand Tönnies, Thorstein Veblen, Herbert Spencer, Georg Simmel, George Herbert Mead, Werner Sombart, Max Weber, György Lukács, Antonio Gramsci, W. E. B. Du Bois, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and C. Wright Mills. Their works address religion, education, economics, law, psychology, ethics and philosophy, with theories having been appropriated in a variety of academic disciplines and beyond. Each key figure is typically associated with a particular theoretical perspective and orientation used to interpret and understand human behaviour. Durkheim, Marx and Weber are frequently cited as the three principle founders of sociology; their works associated with discourses of functionalism, conflict theory and anti-positivism respectively.

Latter-20th century and contemporary figures include Talcott Parsons, Pierre Bourdieu, Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck, Howard Becker, Jurgen Habermas, Daniel Bell, Louis Althusser, Nicos Poulantzas, Ralph Miliband, Simone de Beauvoir, Peter Berger, Herbert Marcuse, Michel Foucault, Alfred Schütz, John Eldridge, George Ritzer, Jean Baudrillard, Gerhard Lenski, Julia Kristeva, Ralf Dahrendorf, Peter Blau, Michael Burawoy, Niklas Luhmann, Luce Irigaray, Ernest Gellner, Richard Hoggart, Stuart Hall, Raymond Williams, Fredric Jameson, Antonio Negri, Ernest Burgess, Herbert Gans, Robert Bellah, Paul Gilroy, John Rex, Edward Said, Judith Butler, Terry Eagleton, Harrison White, Steve Fuller, Barry Wellman, John Thompson, Herbert Blumer and Anthony Giddens.

Institutionalizing sociology as an academic discipline

Karl Marx

The discipline was in the United States taught under its own name for the first time in 1890, at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. The course, whose title was Elements of Sociology, was first taught by Frank Blackmar. It is the oldest continuing sociology course in the United States. The Department of History and Sociology at the University of Kansas, the first fully fledged independent university in the United States, was established in 1891.[7][8] The department of sociology at the University of Chicago was established in 1892 by Albion W. Small, who, in 1895, founded the American Journal of Sociology.[9]

The first European department of sociology was founded in 1895, at the University of Bordeaux by Émile Durkheim, founder of L'Année Sociologique (1896). The first sociology department to be established in the United Kingdom was at the London School of Economics and Political Science (home of the British Journal of Sociology) in 1904.[10] In 1919, a sociology department was established in Germany at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich by Max Weber, and in 1920 in Poland by Florian Znaniecki.

International co-operation in sociology began in 1893, when René Worms founded the Institut International de Sociologie, which was later eclipsed by the much larger International Sociological Association (ISA), founded in 1949.[11] In 1905, the American Sociological Association, the world's largest association of professional sociologists, was founded, and in 1909 the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziologie (German Society for Sociology) was founded by Ferdinand Tönnies, Georg Simmel, and Max Weber, among others.

Positivism and anti-positivism

Max Weber

The methodological approach towards sociology by early theorists, led by Comte, was to treat the discipline in much the same manner as natural science. The emphasis on empiricism and the scientific method sought to provide an incontestable foundation for any sociological claims or findings, and to distinguish sociology from less empirical fields such as philosophy. This methodological approach, called positivism, is based on the assumption that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge, and that such knowledge can come only from positive affirmation of theories through strict scientific and quantitative methods. Émile Durkheim was a major proponent of theoretically founded empirical sociological research,[12] both qualitative and quantitative. His empirical bent was informed by an interest in applying sociological findings to the pursuit of social progress and reform. Today, scholarly accounts of Durkheim's positivism may be vulerable to exaggeration and oversimplification: Comte was the only major sociological thinker to postulate that the social realm may be subject to scientific analysis in broadly the same manner as the noble sciences, whereas Durkheim acknowledged in greater detail the fundamental epistemological limitations.[13]

Reactions against positivism began when German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel voiced opposition to both empiricism, which he rejected as uncritical, and determinism, which he viewed as overly mechanistic.[14] Karl Marx's methodology borrowed from Hegel a rejection of positivism in favour of critical analysis, which seeks to supplement the empirical acquisition of "facts" with the elimination of illusions.[15] He maintained that appearances need to be critiqued, not simply documented. Marx, however, still endeavoured to produce a science of society, which was grounded in the determinism of historical materialism.[15] Other philosophers, including Heinrich Rickert and Wilhelm Dilthey, argued that the natural world differs from the social world because of those unique aspects of human society (meanings, signs, and so on) which inform human cultures.

At the turn of the 20th century Max Weber formally introduced, and extensively theorized on, the position of methodological antipositivism. According to his view, sociological research should concentrate on human cultural norms, values, symbols, and social processes viewed from a subjective perspective. Weber felt that sociology may be loosely described as a 'science' as it is able to identify causal relationships—especially among ideal types, or hypothetical simplifications of complex social phenomena.[16] As a nonpositivist, however, Weber sought relationships that were not as "ahistorical, invariant, or generalizable"[17] as those pursued by natural scientists.

Sociology is the science whose object is to interpret the meaning of social action and thereby give a causal explanation of the way in which the action proceeds and the effects which it produces. By 'action' in this definition is meant the human behaviour when and to the extent that the agent or agents see it as subjectively meaningful ... the meaning to which we refer may be either (a) the meaning actually intended either by an individual agent on a particular historical occasion or by a number of agents on an approximate average in a given set of cases, or (b) the meaning attributed to the agent or agents, as types, in a pure type constructed in the abstract. In neither case is the 'meaning' to be thought of as somehow objectively 'correct' or 'true' by some metaphysical criterion. This is the difference between the empirical sciences of action, such as sociology and history, and any kind of priori discipline, such as jurisprudence, logic, ethics, or aesthetics whose aim is to extract from their subject-matter 'correct' or 'valid' meaning.

– Weber The Nature of Social Action 1922, [18]

Twentieth-century developments

A social network diagram consisting of individuals (or organizations), called 'nodes', which are connected by one or more specific types of interdependency

In the early 20th century, sociology expanded in the United States of America, including developments in both macrosociology, concerned with the evolution of societies, and microsociology, concerned with everyday human social interactions. Based on the pragmatic social psychology of George Herbert Mead, Herbert Blumer and, later, the Chicago school), sociologists developed symbolic interactionism.[19]

In Europe, in the Interwar period, sociology generally was both attacked by increasingly totalitarian governments and rejected by conservative universities. At the same time, originally in Austria and later in the U.S., Alfred Schütz developed social phenomenology, which would later inform social constructionism. Also, members of the Frankfurt school, most of whom moved to the U.S. to escape Nazi persecution, developed critical theory, integrating critical, idealistic and historical materialistic elements of the dialectical philosophies of Hegel and Marx with the insights of Freud, Max Weber—in theory, if not always in name—and others. In the 1930s in the U.S., Talcott Parsons developed action theory which integrated the study of social order and the voluntaristic aspects of macro and micro structural factors, while placing this discussion within a higher epistemological and explanatory context of system theory and cybernetics.

Since World War II, sociology has been revived in Europe, although during the Stalin and Mao eras it was suppressed in the communist countries. In the mid-20th century, there was a general—but not universal—trend for U.S.-American sociology to be more scientific in nature, due partly to the prominence at that time of action theory and other system-theoretical approaches. Sociologists developed new types of quantitative and qualitative research methods. In the second half of the 20th century, sociological research became increasingly employed as a tool by governments and businesses. Parallel with the rise of various social movements in the 1960s, theories emphasizing social struggle, including conflict theory, sought to counter so-called "functionalist approaches". Neomarxist theories had a brief renaissance in the 1960s but thereafter declined as the loosely-interconnected new rubric of post-structuralism evolved.

The sociologist-historian Michel Foucault

The positivist tradition continues to be influential in sociology, especially in the United States.[20] The discipline's two most widely cited American journals, the American Journal of Sociology and the American Sociological Review, primarily publish research in the positivist tradition, with ASR exhibiting greater diversity (the British Journal of Sociology, on the other hand, publishes primarily non-positivist articles).[20] The twentieth century saw improvements to the quantitative methodologies employed in sociology. The development of longitudinal studies that follow the same population over the course of years or decades enabled researchers to study long-term phenomena and increased the researchers' ability to infer causality. The increase in the size of data sets produced by the new survey methods was followed by the invention of new statistical techniques for analyzing this data. The analysis of this data is usually done with statistical software packages such as SAS, Stata, or SPSS.

Social network analysis is an example of a new paradigm in the positivist tradition. The influence of social network analysis is pervasive in many sociological sub fields such as economic sociology (see the work of J. Clyde Mitchell, Harrison White, or Mark Granovetter, for example), organizational behavior, historical sociology, political sociology, or the sociology of education. There is also a minor revival of a more independent, empirical sociology in the spirit of C. Wright Mills, and his studies of the Power Elite in the United States of America, according to Stanley Aronowitz.[21]

Debates

Throughout the development of sociology, controversies have raged about how to emphasize or integrate concerns with subjectivity, objectivity, intersubjectivity and practicality in theory and research. The extent to which sociology may be characterized as a "science" has remained an area of considerable debate with respect to basic ontological and epistemological philosophical questions, though essentially all major sociologists since the early 20th century have accepted that the discipline is not a science in the traditional sense of the word. One outcome of such disputes has been the ongoing formation of multidimensional theories of society, such as the continuing development of various types of critical theory. Another outcome has been the formation of public sociology, which emphasizes the usefulness of sociological analysis to various social groups. Since the respective linguistic and cultural turns of the mid-20th century, the field has seen a growth of literary and journalistic material, though heavily statistical quantitative methods remain common.

Scope and topics of sociology

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Culture

Cultural sociology involves a methodological analysis of the words, artefacts and symbols which interact with forms of social life, whether within subcultures or societies at large. Loosely distinct to culture as a general object of sociological enquiry is the discipline of Cultural Studies, which began at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), a research centre founded in 1964 by Richard Hoggart at the University of Birmingham, England. Birmingham School theorists such as Stuart Hall and Raymond Williams emphasized the reciprocity in how cultural texts and mass-produced products are used, questioning the valorized division between 'producers' and 'consumers' that was evident in earlier neo-Marxist theory, such as that of Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School. Cultural Studies aims to examine its subject matter in terms of cultural practices and their relation to power. For example, a study of a subculture (such as white working class youth in London) would consider the social practices of the youth as they relate to the dominant classes.

Deviance

Leading British sociologist, Anthony Giddens

'Deviance' describes actions or behaviors that violate cultural norms including formally-enacted rules (e.g., crime) as well as informal violations of social norms. It is the remit of sociologists to study how these norms are created; how they change over time; and how they are enforced. The sociology of deviance involves a number of theorems that seek to accurately describe trends and patterns that lie within social deviance, to help better understand societal behaviour. There are three broad sociological classes describing deviant behaviour: structural functionalism; symbolic interactionism; and conflict theory.

Economic Sociology

Economic sociology is the sociological analysis of economic phenomena; the role economic structures and institutions play upon society, and the influence a society holds over the nature of economic structures and institutions. The relationship between capitalism and modernity is a salient issue. Marx's historical materialism attempted to demonstrate how economic forces have a fundamental influence on the structure of society. Max Weber also, though less deterministically, regarded economic processes as key to social understanding. Georg Simmel, particularly in his Philosophy of Money, was important in the early development of economic sociology, as was Emile Durkheim with works such as The Division of Labour in Society. Economic sociology is often synonymous with socioeconomics. In many cases, however, socioeconomists focus on the social impact of specific economic changes, such as the closing of a factory, market manipulation, the signing of international trade treaties, new natural gas regulation, etc.

Education

The sociology of education is the study of how public institutions and individual experiences affects education and its outcome. It is particularly concerned with the schooling systems of modern industrial societies, including the expansion of higher, further, adult, and continuing education.[22]

The Internet

The Internet is of interest to sociologists in various ways. The Internet can be used as a tool for research (for example, conducting online questionnaires), a discussion platform, and as a research topic. Sociology of the Internet in the broad sense includes analysis of online communities (e.g. newsgroups, social networking sites) and virtual worlds. Organizational change is catalyzed through new media like the Internet, thereby influencing social change at-large. This creates the framework for a transformation from an industrial to an informational society (see Manuel Castells and, in particular his turn of the century account of "The Internet Galaxy"). Online communities can be studied statistically through network analysis and at the same time interpreted qualitatively through virtual ethnography. Social change can be studied through statistical demographics, or through the interpretation of changing messages and symbols in online media studies.

Knowledge

The sociology of knowledge is the study of the relationship between human thought and the social context within which it arises, and of the effects prevailing ideas have on societies. The term first came into widespread use in the 1920s, when a number of German-speaking theorists, most notably Max Scheler, and Karl Mannheim, wrote extensively on it. With the dominance of functionalism through the middle years of the 20th century, the sociology of knowledge tended to remain on the periphery of mainstream sociological thought. It was largely reinvented and applied much more closely to everyday life in the 1960s, particularly by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann in The Social Construction of Reality (1966) and is still central for methods dealing with qualitative understanding of human society (compare socially constructed reality). The "archaeological" and "genealogical" studies of Michel Foucault are of considerable contemporary influence.

Law

The sociology of law refers to both a sub-discipline of sociology and an approach within the field of legal studies. Sociology of law is a diverse field of study which examines the interaction of law with other aspects of society, such as the effect of legal institutions, doctrines, and practices on other social phenomena and vice versa. Some of its areas of inquiry include the social development of legal institutions, the social construction of legal issues, and the relation of law to social change. Sociology of law also intersects with the fields of jurisprudence, economic analysis of law and more specialized subjects such as criminology.[23]

Political Sociology

Leading German sociologist and critical theorist, Jürgen Habermas

Political sociology is the study of power and the intersection of personality, social structure and politics. Political sociology is interdisciplinary, where political science and sociology intersect. The discipline uses comparative history to analyze systems of government and economic organization to understand the political climate of societies. By comparing and analyzing history and sociological data, political trends and patterns emerge. The founders of political sociology were Max Weber (Germany) and Moisey Ostrogorsky (Russia).

There are four main areas of research focus in contemporary political sociology:

  1. The socio-political formation of the modern state.
  2. "Who rules"? How social inequality between groups (class, race, gender, etc.) influences politics.
  3. How public personalities, social movements and trends outside of the formal institutions of political power affect politics, and
  4. Power relationships within and between social groups (e.g. families, workplaces, bureaucracy, media, etc).

Race Relations

Race relations is the area of sociology that studies the social, political, and economic relations between races and ethnicities at all different levels of society. This area encompasses the study of racism, and of complex political interactions between members of different groups.

Religion

The sociology of religion concerns the practices, social structures, historical backgrounds, developments, universal themes and roles of religion in society. There is particular emphasis on the recurring role of religion in all societies and throughout recorded history. Crucially the sociology of religion does not involve an assessment of the truth-claims particular to a religion, though the process of comparing multiple conflicting dogmas may require what Peter Berger has described as inherent 'methodological atheism'. Sociologists of religion attempt to explain the effects of society on religion and the effects of religion on society; in other words, their dialectical relationship. It may be said that the discipline of sociology began with the analysis of religion in Durkheim's 1897 study of suicide rates amongst Catholic and Protestant populations. Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is another major work in the historical canon of sociological literature.

Scientific knowledge and institutions

The sociology of science involves the study of science as a social activity, especially dealing "with the social conditions and effects of science, and with the social structures and processes of scientific activity."[24] Theorists include Gaston Bachelard, Karl Popper, Paul Feyerabend, Thomas Kuhn, Martin Kusch, Bruno Latour, Michel Foucault, Anselm Strauss, Lucy Suchman, Barry Barnes, David Bloor, Harry Collins, and Steve Fuller.

Practical applications

Social research informs educators, planners, lawmakers, administrators, developers, business magnates, and people interested in resolving social issues and formulating public policy.

Public sociology is an approach to sociology that seeks to engage wider audiences and become, in the words of Michael Burawoy, the "mirror and conscience of society".

Research methods

Social interactions and their consequences are studied in sociology

As in any field of research, methods of sociological inquiry vary. The type of methodology used to research topics in sociology is predicated upon the theoretical orientation of the researcher. The basic goal of sociological research is to understand the social world in its many forms. Quantitative methods and qualitative methods are two main types of sociological research. Sociologists often use the quantitative methods, such as social statistics or network analysis to investigate the structure of a social process or describe patterns in social relationships. Sociologists also often use the qualitative methods such as focused interviews, group discussions and ethnographic methods to investigate social processes. Sociologists also use applied research methods such as evaluation research and assessment.

The following list of research methods is neither exclusive nor exhaustive. Researchers may adopt one or more than one type of research methodology for a research project. Types of research methods include the following:

  • Archival research: sometimes referred to as "Historical Method". This research uses information from a variety of historical records such as biographies, memoirs and news releases.
  • Content analysis: The contents of interviews and questionnaires are analyzed using systematic approaches. An example of this type of research methodology is known as "grounded theory." Books and mass media are also analyzed to study how people communicate and the messages people talk or write about.
  • Experimental research: The researcher isolates a single social process or social phenomena and uses the data to either confirm or construct social theory. Participants (also referred to as "subjects") are randomly assigned to various conditions or "treatments", and then analyzes are made between groups. Randomization allows the researcher to be sure that the treatment is having the effect on group differences and not any extraneous factors.
  • Survey research: The researcher obtains data from interviews, questionnaires, or similar feedback from a set of people chosen (including random selection) to represent a particular population of interest. Survey items from an interview or questionnaire may be open-ended or closed-ended.
  • Life history: This is the study of the personal life trajectories. Through a series of interviews, the researcher can probe into the decisive moments or various influences in their life.
  • Longitudinal study: This is an extensive examination of a specific person or group over a long period of time.
  • Observation: Using data from the senses, one records information about social phenomenon or behavior. Observation techniques can be either participant observation or non-participant observation. In participant observation, the researcher goes into the field (such as a community or a place of work), and participates in the activities of the field for a prolonged period of time in order acquire a deep understanding of it. Data acquired through these techniques may be analyzed either quantitatively or qualitatively.

The choice of a method in part often depends on the researcher's epistemological approach to research as well as the researchers theoretical perspective. For example, researchers who are concerned with a statistical generalization to assign to a population will most likely administer structured interviews with a survey questionnaire to a carefully selected sample population. By contrast, sociologists, especially ethnographers, who are more interested in having a full contextual understanding of group members' lives will choose participant observation, observation, and open-ended interviews. Many studies combine several of these methodologies. Adopting three (3) methodologies is referred to as "triangulation".

As is the case in most disciplines, sociologists are often divided into distinctive camps of support for particular research methodologies. This is based upon the researcher's theoretical orientation. In practice, some sociologists combine different research methods and approaches, since different methods produce different types of findings that correspond to different aspects of societies. For example, quantitative methods may help describe social patterns, while qualitative approaches could help to understand how individuals understand those patterns. This, however, does not mean that a qualitative approach can not identify or define patterns of behavior. Nonetheless, the method of analysis of the data obtained from a research methodology may be qualitative, quantitative or both.

Sociology and other social sciences

Sociology overlaps with varied other disciplines that also deal with the study of society. The fields of anthropology, economics, political science and psychology have influenced and have been influenced by sociology, and these fields share a great amount of history and common research interests. The distinct field of social psychology[25] emerged from the many intersections of sociological and psychological interests; the field is further distinguished in terms of sociological or psychological emphasis.

Today, sociology and other social sciences are better contrasted according to methodology rather than by objects of study.

Sociobiology is the study of how social behavior and organization have been influenced by evolution and other biological process. The field blends sociology with a number of other sciences, such as anthropology, biology, zoology, and others. Although sociobiology once rapidly gained acceptance, it has generated controversy within the sociological academy. Sociologists have criticized the discipline for not giving sufficient attention to the effects of society and environment on gene expression and behavior in general.

Sociological ideas are also widely used in management science, especially with regard to organizational behavior, and are applied to fields such as social work.

See also

Wikipedia Books Wikipedia:Books has a book on: Sociology

Related theories, methods and fields of inquiry

Footnotes

  1. ^ Giddens, Anthony, Duneier, Mitchell, Applebaum, Richard. 2007. Introduction to Sociology. Sixth Edition. New York: W.W. Norton and Company
  2. ^ Ashley D, Orenstein DM (2005). Sociological theory: Classical statements (6th ed.). Boston, MA, USA: Pearson Education. pp. 3-5, 32-36. 
  3. ^ Ashley D, Orenstein DM (2005). Sociological theory: Classical statements (6th ed.). Boston, MA, USA: Pearson Education. pp. 3-5, 38-40. 
  4. ^ Des Manuscrits de Sieyès. 1773-1799, Volumes I and II, published by Christine Fauré, Jacques Guilhaumou, Jacques Vallier et Françoise Weil, Paris, Champion, 1999 and 2007. See also Christine Fauré and Jacques Guilhaumou, Sieyès et le non-dit de la sociologie: du mot à la chose, in Revue d’histoire des sciences humaines, Numéro 15, novembre 2006: Naissances de la science sociale. See also the article 'sociologie' in the French-language Wikipedia.
  5. ^ A Dictionary of Sociology, Article: Comte, Auguste
  6. ^ a b Dictionary of the Social Sciences, Article: Comte, Auguste
  7. ^ "University of Kansas Sociology Department Webpage". Ku.edu. http://www.ku.edu/%7Esocdept/about/. Retrieved 2009-04-20. 
  8. ^ "University of Kansas News Story". News.ku.edu. 2005-06-15. http://www.news.ku.edu/2005/June/June15/sociology.shtml. Retrieved 2009-04-20. 
  9. ^ "American Journal of Sociology Website". Journals.uchicago.edu. 1970-01-01. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJS/home.html. Retrieved 2009-04-20. 
  10. ^ "British Journal of Sociology Website". Lse.ac.uk. 2009-04-02. http://www.lse.ac.uk/serials/Bjs/. Retrieved 2009-04-20. 
  11. ^ http://www.isa-sociology.org/ International Sociological Association Website
  12. ^ Ashley D, Orenstein DM (2005). Sociological theory: Classical statements (6th ed.). Boston, MA, USA: Pearson Education. p. 94. 
  13. ^ Ashley D, Orenstein DM (2005). Sociological theory: Classical statements (6th ed.). Boston, MA, USA: Pearson Education. pp. 94-98, 100-104. 
  14. ^ Ashley D, Orenstein DM (2005). Sociological theory: Classical statements (6th ed.). Boston, MA, USA: Pearson Education. p. 169. 
  15. ^ a b Ashley D, Orenstein DM (2005). Sociological theory: Classical statements (6th ed.). Boston, MA, USA: Pearson Education. pp. 202-203. 
  16. ^ Ashley D, Orenstein DM (2005). Sociological theory: Classical statements (6th ed.). Boston, MA, USA: Pearson Education. pp. 239-240. 
  17. ^ Ashley D, Orenstein DM (2005). Sociological theory: Classical statements (6th ed.). Boston, MA, USA: Pearson Education. p. 241. 
  18. ^ Weber, Max The Nature of Social Action in Runciman, W.G. 'Weber: Selections in Translation' Cambridge University Press, 1991. p7.
  19. ^ The Mead Project
  20. ^ a b Positivism in sociological research: USA and UK (1966--1990). By: Gartrell, C. David, Gartrell, John W., British Journal of Sociology, 00071315, Dec2002, Vol. 53, Issue 4
  21. ^ "Stanley Aronowitz". Logosjournal.com. http://www.logosjournal.com/aronowitz.htm. Retrieved 2009-04-20. 
  22. ^ Gordon Marshall (ed) A Dictionary of Sociology (Article: Sociology of Education), Oxford University Press, 1998
  23. ^ Jary, Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 636
  24. ^ Ben-David, Joseph; Teresa A. Sullivan (1975). "Sociology of Science". Annual Review of Sociology 1: 203–222. doi:10.1146/annurev.so.01.080175.001223. http://www.compilerpress.atfreeweb.com/Anno%20Ben%20David%20&%20Sullivan%20Sociology%20of%20Science%20ARS%201975.htm. Retrieved 2006-11-29. 
  25. ^ Sherif, M., and CW Sherif. An Outline of Social Psychology (rev. ed.). New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956

Bibliography

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