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Classical Sociology

Founding Fathers

• Plato – developed utopian model of society (ideal type)

• Auguste Comte coined the term sociology in 1838
• As a subject of study in the university – 19th Century – Albion Small
taught at the University of Chicago
• Development of modern sociology – began in the 1940s to 1950s

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Bernard Mandeville (1670 – 1733)

• Mandeville was British Doctor know for his work

• “The Fable of the Bees” (1714) where Adam Smith
derived the concept of ”division of labor”
• It was a commentary he made on a poem he wrote in 1705
“The Grumbling Bee Hive” (1705)
• Private vices, Public Benefits – what maybe bad behavior
may be beneficial for society as a whole

Adam Smith (1723 – 1790)

• Adam Smith
• Scottish philosopher
• Wondered why English Society started to prosper
• The Wealth of Nations
• Invisible Hand (The Butcher, the Baker, the Brewer)
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the
brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but
from their regard of their own interest. We address
ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love,
and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages”. –
Adam Smith

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Adam Smith (1723 – 1790)

• The Division of Labor

• “One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it,
a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the
head, to make the head requires two or three distinct
operations...”

Adam Smith (1723 – 1790)

• The Wealth of Nations

• Rise in productivity
“The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the
greater part of the skill, dexterity, and judgement with which it is any where
directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.”
• universal opulence - diffusion of wealth
• Social Stratification
• The Division of Labor is limited by the size of the market

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Adam Smith (1723 – 1790)

• Real and Nominal Price of Commodities

• Real
• “labor is the real measure of the exchangeable value of commodities”
• ”man is rich or poor depending on the labor he can command”
• “…the real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who
wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it”
• Original purchase money, not gold or silver
• Exchange based on other price of other commodities not labor – barter
• Nominal
• Money (fluctuating value)
• Purchasing Power – “a power of purchasing a certain control over all
labor / over all the produce of all labor in the market”

Auguste Comte (1798 – 1857)

• French Philosopher
• Father of Sociology
• Process of Secularization
• Main question: what are sociological consequences of secularization
• Underscored how scientific knowledge emerged
from pre-existing religious beliefs
• He believed the religion created a social cement
in France
• Development of society - IDEAS

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Auguste Comte (1798 – 1857)

Philosophical Science /
Theological Positivism
Metaphysical

• Structural crisis in society from intellectual crisis – NO COMMON

IDEAS THAT BIND SOCIETY (i.e. conservatives vs positivists after
the 1789 French revolution)
• Early functionalism (i.e. biology and sociology)
• First called sociology ”la physique sociale” / social physics

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805 – 1859)

• Was first considered a classical thinker in the area of Sociology after

French sociologist Raymond Aron put him alongside the greats such as
Comte, Durkheim, Marx, and Weber in his book entitled “Les Étapes de
la Pensée Sociologique” / Main Currents in Sociological Thought
• Member of the Parliament, Minister of Foreign Affairs
• French aristocrat; his family suffered casualties during the 1789 French
Revolution
• Known for his work on “democracy” - De la Démocratie en Amérique /
On Democracy in America published in 1835
• Initially invited to write about the US penitentiary system (May 1831
to February 1832)

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Alexis de Tocqueville (1805 – 1859)

• Democracy
• Change of power through non-violent means
• Tyranny of Majority Elite
• Highly centralized government
• Observed the process of democratisation – people became Middle
more equal (i.e. education, housing, punishment for crimes)
• Social Mobility
Class

Lower Class

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805 – 1859)

• Democracy
• Separation of Powers
• Right to peaceful assembly / concept of
grassroots politics
• Religious freedom / role of religion in
maintaining social order
• Revolutions will become rare
• Relationship between social structure
and intellectual constructions

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Karl Marx (1818 – 1883)

• Social factors affect individuals - “It is not the consciousness of men that
determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that
determines their consciousness”.
• Economic Base – foundation
• Changes in mode of production determined
transformed societies
• Viewed man as “homo faber” (worker)
• Labor allows man to achieve his full potential
• Hard work is a virtue
• Capitalism distorted the concept of the value of
Man’s labor

Karl Marx (1818 – 1883)

• Labor Theory of Value

• Recall that Adam Smith asserted that it is only labor that can determine the
value of any commodity
• Difference between “use value” and ”exchange value”
• Value – effect of the man’s alienation from his product
• Workers sell their labor in exchange of subsistence wage
• Alienation
• Products (i.e. craft vs pins made in factory)
• Production Process (i.e. creative process vs factor process)
• Fellow Workers (i.e. no interaction)
• Themselves

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Karl Marx (1818 – 1883)

• Class Struggle
• Class – capitalist class and the proletarians
• Social inequalities, social stratification
• Nature of the capitalist system
• Overlooked to role of competition
• Class Consciousness
• Workers are detached and disconnected but they must realize that they
share similar concerns
• Predictions
• Capitalist system will self-destruct
• Socialist Revolution -à Communist Society

Émile Durkheim (1858 – 1917)

• Father of French Sociology

• After Durkheim’s death in 1917, Sociology became a
university degree
• Labored to differentiate sociology from other disciplines
• Studied the social phenomenon of suicide
• Types of Solidarity
• Mechanic – old society (i.e. based on traditional ties)
• Organic – modern society (i.e. based on the interdependence
of people)

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Émile Durkheim (1858 – 1917)

• Study of Social Facts

• When people form collectives, they develop certain
characteristics that cannot be found in individual
members
• Process of association can affect individual behavior
vs prediction of behavior based on individual profiles
• Reality is sui generis (unique)

Émile Durkheim (1858 – 1917)

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Émile Durkheim (1858 – 1917)

Émile Durkheim (1858 – 1917)

• Study of Suicide
• Egoistic Suicide (i.e. results from weakening of social cohesion) Social Relationships
• Altruistic Suicide (i.e. results from strong individualist feelings)
• Anomic Suicide (i.e. results from breakdown of social norms)
• Fatalistic suicide (i.e. strict regulations) Social Structures

• Suicide Rates between different social groups (i.e. married vs

single; economic status; religious groups, etc.)
• Tried to depart from mental illness as the major cause of suicide
• Necessarily led him to the level of individual in his analysis of
suicide

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Émile Durkheim (1858 – 1917)

• Study of Religion
• Book- 1913: The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
• Understand the lived experience of people to understand what that
experience meant for them
• Power of Religion
• Coercive force (i.e. encourages and/or discourages you from doing certain
things)
• Source of strength (i.e. provide comfort in times of crisis or grief)
• Power of Religion (i.e. coercive and external power over individuals) is the
Power of the Society
• Functions of Religion
• Strengthens social cohesion
• Supports social regulation
• prevents anomie /repairs social ties

Max Weber (1864 – 1920)

• Value-free sociology
• As opposed to Durkheim’s emphasis on the study of society
through social facts, Weber was a strong proponent of
methodological individualism
Durkheim Weber

”when a social fact is reduced to an “if a general sociological concept

individual fact, that explanation must cannot be illuminated in terms of the
be wrong” chance that individuals would act in a
certain way, that concept should be
abandoned…”

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Max Weber (1864 – 1920)

• Defined sociology as the “science concerning itself with the

interpretive understanding of social action”
• Social action – where action means ”any subjective meaning an
individual attaches to his/her action” and social “when the
individual’s subjective meaning takes account of the behavior of
others and is thereby oriented by them”
• Ideal Type of Social Action- construction of a purely rational
course of action / not reality

Max Weber (1864 – 1920)

• Types of Social Action

• Goal-rational (i.e. focus on goal)
• Value-rational (i.e. value accorded to action)
• Affective (i.e. driven by emotions)
• Traditional (i.e. actions based customary traditions)
• Types of Authority
• Charismatic (i.e. extraordinary devotion, heroic image, etc.)
• Traditional (i.e. derived from tradition / customs – divine right to rule)
• Rational-legal (i.e. constitution, body of laws, etc.)

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Acknowledgments

• Dr. Bart van Heerikhuizen’s discussion on Classical Sociology

• Owners of images used in the presentation

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