Introduction

To understand the relationship between Law and Morality, it is first necessary to understand
what the terms Law and Morality mean. Law is not something that can be read and taken
literally. The school of natural law interpreted law in relation to morality by using the term
morality. It focused on what should be the rule rather than what is currently the law. They argued
that law should be interpreted in terms of faith, morality, liberty, justice, and conscience, rather
than merely in terms of the law.

The Concept of Law refers to the body of rules of conduct in the society of a binding legal force
and effect, prescribed, recognized, and enforced by the supreme authority. The Law acts as a
glue that binds a specific community by imposing penalties on the recidivists. The Law is always
enacted by the supreme body in a particular nation and the enactment without any powers
renders the law void. In the UK, the parliament is bestowed with authorities to enact laws and
ensure the protection of human rights.1 This makes Law the body of rules backed by sanctions.

The citizens of a specific country cannot merely infringe the provisions of the Law as this
amounts to the punishment. Article 2 of the European Convention of Human Rights provides for
the right to life and shall be protected by the Law. It extends that no one shall be dispossessed of
his life deliberately.2 If the debtor raises the defence of receiving the indebtedness in the money
in good faith, then the debtor can be given little time to settle the debts without being jailed. The
UK parliament as the lawmaking body established the Supreme Court as the last appellate court
in regards to any suits.3 For this matter, the Supreme Court and its primary functions are to
interpret that Law and protect the rights of the citizens. The judges are always vigilant in making
their decisions by considering the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The legal system as a body of command must involve a network of rules.4 The essence of being
ruled is not enough to differentiate a judicial order from any other social institution which
employs the standards of justification. Hart, a philosopher of Law, recognized that the unique
structure of the legal system could not comprise in its being merely a mere system of rules.
Accordingly, to account for the distinguishing features of the legal system, Hart introduced
several additional elements into his examination.5 The first addition is the affirmation that Law is
the unification of two distinct types of rules and Hart termed them the primary and secondary
elements. Also, provisions of the central type deal with the actions involving the physical
movement or the changes. In the more profound highlight, the second type of rules specifies how
the laws of the first type are to be formulated, interpreted, applied, amended, and abolished. The
first rules ensure the regulation of the behaviour whereas the secondary controls are responsible
for regulating or informing and coordinating other laws.

According to John Austin, in his submission in the positivistic school of view, the Law is a set of
rules that govern a community. They are designed by those in the top authorities to help them
rule their subordinates. He added that the Law refers to the mechanism through which the top
authorities communicate their needs to the community by providing sanctions for the offences
committed by their subordinates. This implies that the Law is the rule that is designed by humans
to suit their needs. Austin views the Law as the mere expression of a desire of the sovereign
people in a particular state. 6 For instance, the sovereign may say that it would prefer their
subordinates to do something that may or may not benefit the people doing such a job. The state
may incorporate the issue such as the payment of taxes by starting from a specified date.
Interestingly, these desires are backed up by the credible use of threat or force or, and there is
always assured of punishment for those who oppose the move.

The Law depends upon the wishes of the political authority as the sovereign body. This implies
that every rule that emerges as originating from the sovereign becomes a command. 7 As such,
Law is a variety of commands that are designed by the monarch. For instance, a person of the
higher rank in the community who proposes to do or refrain from something expresses their
intimation, and such wish becomes a command. In this regard, the subordinates are obligated to
adhere to such authorities.

Every legal system must provide for the penalties for the crimes that such Law prohibits in a
particular country. The sanction is an evil that will be incurred if the set of commands or the
rules are disobeyed and encompasses how the powers or duties are enforced. As such, the notion
of sanction is broader than punishment. The reward for submitting to the command can hardly be
called the penalty.8 The control embraces issues such as the wish or desire perceived by the
rational being to another sensible person who can do or forbears the commanded individuals.
Besides, the evil to advance from the former to be experienced by the latter in case of
noncompliance. Also, the intimidation or expression of the will by the words. This implies that
the command relates to the rules or Law that obliges people generally to forbearances. Law as a
command obligates persons to a course of conduct, and the penalties are associated with
deterring resistance to meet such manner. It requires sense and can only emanate from the
determinable source or the author. As such, the body of command proceeds from the superiors
binds and obligate the inferiors. The superiors are bestowed with the power of affecting others
with evil or pain and of forcing them to conform to their conduct to their set of orders. Therefore,
the notion of Law in regards to John Austin's view is the set of rules that protects the desires of
the sovereign.

In contrast to the above, the proposition that all the laws are commands to some extent has
limitations. This because some rules provide for the amendment and the enactment processes but
do not affect lifestyles in the community. Besides, some of the Act highlights only the favourable
laws that are declaratory of the existing laws. Also, the repealing statutes are always present that
shape the commands. Law of imperfection should contain effective sanction such as the rules of
morality or rules of universal Law.

In the separate view, the Concept of Law is the body of the rule that came from God and man
promotes the principles already laid down by God. God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses
and Moses delivered them to the men for guidance throughout the wilderness. 9 The chief
proponent in the natural law school of Law is Thomas Aquinas whose works support the origin
of Law as to have come from God.

However, positivism characterized law as stressing that it is only subject to our own experiences.
There is no connection between morality and the law. The law is the coming of the Sovereign
that can be enforced through punishment.

Morality is a collection of principles that allow people to live together in communities. It's what
societies deem right and appropriate Morality isn't set in stone. What you consider appropriate
in your culture will not be acceptable in another. Morals are influenced by geographical areas,
faith, family, and life experiences.
Relationship between Law and Morality:

While law is a subject of study in Political Science and morality is a subject of study in Ethics,
the two have a close relationship. Law and morality are mutually reinforcing. People are taught
the code of conduct by ethics. It demonstrates the difference between fact and deception. It
makes us aware of our acts' wrongness and rightness. Ethics allows us to think morally and
improves our moral standing. It aids in the creation of our moral standards. The same goal is
pursued by state-enacted legislation.

The overarching goal of the state is to promote people's well-being. Individuals can also benefit
from political science in order to become better people. An individual can only become an ideal
citizen if he adheres to the morality code of conduct. As a result, there is a strong connection
between law and morality. And when a state functions under ideal moral rules can it be called an
ideal state. The foundation of ideal laws is morality. It would aid the emergency of an ideal state
if the state works under ideal laws based on morality.In analyzing the theory laid by Immanuel
Kant, the distinction between Law and morals is to be realized from the fact that the Constitution
controls the external relations of men while morality manages their inner life and motivation in
the society.15 In the case of Pretty v United Kingdom, the court stated that it is difficult to
separate the legal and moral. As a result of that ruling, it becomes easy to understand that Law
and morality are similar entities. As asserted, the disagreement between the bodies of positivism
and the natural law theory is the perception of whether it is relevant to establish a connection
between them.

The natural law theory regards Law as the central Concept of morality legitimate power and is
morally neutral to the essence of power.16 This shows that there are the main concepts between
the Law and honesty that make them operate concurrently. Judges always contemplate the
provisions of both the Law and the moral principles before uttering their decisions in every case
concerning the Law and morality. The natural law theory attempts to push the argument further
and to declare that human beings are likewise devoted to and united in their conception of aims
(the pursuit of knowledge, justice to their fellow men) other than that of survival13. Therefore,
Law and morality are interrelated to the extent that the existence of one corroborates the
presence of the other.
In the essence of both morality and Law, humans are obligated to take care of their neighbors
from both attacks and protecting them from the eradicating deeds that affect others. Morality
prohibits the indecent act of misbehaving to others and to Law it amounts to the punishment.
Lord Atkin, in Donoghue v Stevenson, stated a legal principle from the moral principle,
deliberately modifying the latter to the requirements of the former. “If morality pronounces that I
should love my neighbor, the Law requires that I must not injure my neighbor,” Atkin. 17 In the
Law, the neighbor is everyone so closely and directly that can be affected by the act of the
neighbor. In this sense, Lord Atkin draws a firm connection between the legal system and the
Law which introduces their correlation of the two entities. In the case of Stevenson v Donoghue,
the plaintiff took the drinks manufactured by the defendants. The drink contained decomposed
snail. Consequently, the plaintiff suffered from the shock at the sight of the snail. 18 Court held
that every person is obligated to take care of another and the neighbor owes such duty even in the
absence of the existing contract between the manufacturer and the consumer. Given the facts
above, Law and morality consider the relationship between the humans in the community. Both
morality and Law direct the manufacturers of the consumables or the manufacturers As such,
both Law and honesty are the fundamental entities for the development of the community since
they both mandatorily prohibit immoral acts such as murder. Several tort and criminal law
provisions address the general obligation that one's neighbours should be morally and legally
protected.

This kind of social relationship provided by both morality and Law brings about the sense of
connection between the two concepts. For instance, these relationships can be constructed on the
universal adherence to the beliefs, positive sharing of moral, spiritual, ideological or intellectual
commitments. This means that a community cannot be one if both the Law and the ethical
principles are not connected. Therefore, society is built on the concurrent operation of legal and
moral principles.

The proponents of the positivism state that Law and morality are mostly separate entities. 19 In
contrast, the proponents of natural law theory asserted that Law and morality should operate
synchronously. Law and honesty are the close entities that each cannot function without the
presence of the other.20 Good morals help in designing good laws and wrong morals are
associated with the enactment of immoral acts and vice versa. Therefore, Law and morality are
the related entities that each supports the presence of another.

Law is generally a set of principles enacted and enforced by the sovereigns while morals are the
little set of beliefs and the behavioural standards which are created and enforced ty the societal
members. The parliament is the only recognized arm of government responsible for the making
of the laws. For instance, section 122 of the Constitution matches with the provisions on the rules
in the UK that the federal parliament is the only authorized body conferred with powers to enact
laws for the territories in Australia.21 These powers made the national parliament to give the
region's self-government by passing the Northern Territory or the Self-Government Act 1978 and
also the Australian Capital Territory Act 1988. As such, the parliament is always bestowed with
the powers to enact laws for the country. For proper administration of the country, other
authorities have been allowed to enact subsidiary legislations inform of the orders, ordinances,
decrees among others. On the same note, morality is communally made primarily by the elders
of the community. Honesty in the more profound sense rises from the village although the Law
ensures the regulation of the moral characters of the societal members.

In the real sense, the Law overrules and governs the morality in a particular country. Morals
come from the communal setting and are not made by the recognized authorities, and most of the
morals fall under the unwritten laws or the Customary Law. Courts cannot entertain customary
laws that are repugnant to the already written constitutions. This means that morals that are
against the laws enacted by the recognized authority are always scrapped off the community and
declared illegal. For instance, in case a person commits incestuous marriage, the elders of the
community gather and impose some slight penalty on the offender and yet in most of the
countries, it leads to imprisonment under the Law. This indicates that the societal punishment for
the offences is less than the penalty under the Law. The Law imposes sanctions on the offenders
whose moral degrade the community. in the case of Shaw v Director of Public Prosecutions
1962 AC 220, Lord Reid said stated that Court House would decide it in that conspiracy to
corrupt public morals is a crime known to the Law of England. Therefore, the Law enforces good
morals in the community and prohibits individuals from committing crimes.
Difference between Law and Morality

There was no difference between law and morality in Ancient Societies. They were both thought
to be the same person. With the arrival of the middle Ages, faith provided a spiritual foundation
for the law. Modern philosophers in the post-Reformation period stressed the contrast between
law and morality.

The following are some of the differences between law and morality:

1. Law is concerned with a person's individual liberty, while morality is concerned with
collective conceptions of what is good and evil.
2. Law governs a man's behaviour when he is a member of a particular society, whereas
morals govern a man's behaviour even when he is alone.
3. Laws consider a man's outward behaviour, while morals consider factors such as inner
resolve and willpower direction.
4. Law is imposed by "external coercion," while values appeal to an individual's free will.

Case laws on Law and Morality

1. Queen vs. Dudley and Stephen's Case [4] for many days, the defendants, Dudley and
Stephens, as well as two other gentlemen, Mr. Brooks and the survivor, Richard Parker,
sat on the boat. When it became clear that everyone would perish from thirst and hunger,
the defendants agreed to kill Parker for the sake of the others. A man who kills another to
eat his flesh in order to escape hunger death is guilty of murder; however, he is in such
circumstances at the time of the act that he believes and has fair reasons to believe that it
is the only way to save his life.
2. Judgment of the case: In this case, the court held that one person cannot sacrifice another
person's life to save his or her own. And on these facts, there was no evidence of any
necessity that could justify the prisoners in killing the boy and they were guilty of
murder. It becomes very much clear by the decision in this case that what appeared to be
morally right from the eyes of the defendants was considered as a crime in the eyes of the
law.
 
 3. Oppenheimer v Cattermole He lost his German citizenship and was liable to pay taxes
under German law 1913, "When there were no problems of the countries being at war,"
which claimed that a German lost their German nationality if they obtained a foreign
nationality without permission.

Distinction between Law and Morality

Law and morality are related concepts, but they are distinct from each other. Law refers to a set
of rules and regulations that are enforced by the state or other governing authority, while
morality refers to a set of principles or values that guide individuals' behavior and judgments
about what is right or wrong.

One of the main differences between law and morality is that law is enforceable by the state,
whereas morality is not. This means that breaking the law can result in legal consequences, such
as fines or imprisonment, while breaking moral principles may result in social disapproval or
moral condemnation.

Another difference is that laws are created and enforced by a governing authority, while morality
is shaped by various factors, including cultural norms, religion, philosophy, and personal beliefs.
The law is typically a product of a formal legal process, such as legislation or court rulings,
while morality is often influenced by informal sources, such as family and community values.

Furthermore, the consequences of violating the law and violating moral principles can be
different. For example, violating the law against theft may result in a criminal record and
imprisonment, while violating the moral principle against lying may result in a loss of trust and
respect.
However, despite these differences, law and morality are not entirely separate from each other.
Laws are often based on moral principles, such as the prohibition of murder or theft, and moral
principles can influence the development and interpretation of laws. In addition, the enforcement
of certain laws can have moral implications, such as the use of capital punishment.

In conclusion, while law and morality are distinct concepts, they are related in important ways.
The law is enforceable by the state and is a formal product of legal processes, while morality is
shaped by various informal sources and does not have the same legal consequences as breaking
the law. However, moral principles can influence the development and interpretation of laws,
and the enforcement of certain laws can have moral implications.

Birth of sociology
Auguste Comte (1798–1857), widely considered the “father of sociology,” became interested in
studying society because of the changes that took place as a result of the French Revolution and the
Industrial Revolution. During the French Revolution, which began in 1789, France’s class system changed
dramatically. Aristocrats suddenly lost their money and status, while peasants, who had been at the
bottom of the social ladder, rose to more powerful and influential positions. The Industrial Revolution
followed on the heels of the French Revolution, unfolding in Western Europe throughout the 1800s.
During the Industrial Revolution, people abandoned a life of agriculture and moved to cities to find
factory jobs. They worked long hours in dangerous conditions for low pay. New social problems
emerged and, for many decades, little was done to address the plight of the urban poor. Comte looked
at the extensive changes brought about by the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution and tried
to make sense of them. He felt that the social sciences that existed at the time, including political
science and history, couldn’t adequately explain the chaos and upheaval he saw around him. He decided
an entirely new science was needed. He called this new science sociology, which comes from the root
word socius, a Latin word that means “companion” or “being with others.”
Comte decided that to understand society, one had to follow certain procedures, which we know now as
the scientific method. The scientific method is the use of systematic and specific procedures to test
theories in psychology, the natural sciences, and other fields. Comte also believed in positivism, which is
the application of the scientific method to the analysis of society. Comte felt that sociology could be
used to inspire social reforms and generally make a society a better place for its members. Comte’s
standards of “research” were not nearly as exacting as today’s, and most of his conclusions have been
disregarded, as they were based mostly on observation rather than serious investigation. In the United
States, sociology was first taught as an academic discipline at the University of Kansas in 1890, at the
University of Chicago in 1892, and at Atlanta University in 1897. Over time, it spread to other
universities in North America. The first department of sociology opened at McGill University in
Montreal, Canada, in 1922, followed by sociology departments at Harvard University in 1930 and at the
University of California at Berkeley in the 1950s.
sociology, a social science that studies human societies, their interactions, and the processes that
preserve and change them. It does this by examining the dynamics of constituent parts of
societies such as institutions, communities, populations, and gender, racial, or age groups.
Sociology also studies social status or stratification, social movements, and social change, as
well as societal disorder in the form of crime, deviance, and revolution.

Social life overwhelmingly regulates the behaviour of humans, largely because humans lack the
instincts that guide most animal behaviour. Humans therefore depend on social institutions and
organizations to inform their decisions and actions. Given the important role organizations play
in influencing human action, it is sociology’s task to discover how organizations affect the
behaviour of persons, how they are established, how organizations interact with one another,
how they decay, and, ultimately, how they disappear. Among the most basic organizational
structures are economic, religious, educational, and political institutions, as well as more
specialized institutions such as the family, the community, the military, peer groups, clubs, and
volunteer associations.

Sociology, as a generalizing social science, is surpassed in its breadth only by anthropology—a

discipline that encompasses archaeology, physical anthropology, and linguistics. The broad
nature of sociological inquiry causes it to overlap with other social sciences such as economics,
political science, psychology, geography, education, and law. Sociology’s distinguishing feature
is its practice of drawing on a larger societal context to explain social phenomena.

Sociologists also utilize some aspects of these other fields. Psychology and sociology, for
instance, share an interest in the subfield of social psychology, although psychologists
traditionally focus on individuals and their mental mechanisms. Sociology devotes most of its
attention to the collective aspects of human behaviour, because sociologists place greater
emphasis on the ways external groups influence the behaviour of individuals.

The field of social anthropology has been historically quite close to sociology. Until about the
first quarter of the 20th century, the two subjects were usually combined in one department
(especially in Britain), differentiated mainly by anthropology’s emphasis on the sociology of
preliterate peoples. Recently, however, this distinction has faded, as social anthropologists have
turned their interests toward the study of modern culture.

Two other social sciences, political science and economics, developed largely from the practical
interests of nations. Increasingly, both fields have recognized the utility of sociological concepts
and methods. A comparable synergy has also developed with respect to law, education, and
religion and even in such contrasting fields as engineering and architecture. All of these fields
can benefit from the study of institutions and social interaction.

Historical development of sociology

Though sociology draws on the Western tradition of rational inquiry established by the ancient
Greeks, it is specifically the offspring of 18th- and 19th-century philosophy and has been
viewed, along with economics and political science, as a reaction against speculative philosophy
and folklore. Consequently, sociology separated from moral philosophy to become a specialized
discipline. While he is not credited with the founding of the discipline of sociology, French
philosopher Auguste Comte is recognized for having coined the term sociology.

The founders of sociology spent decades searching for the proper direction of the new discipline.
They tried several highly divergent pathways, some driven by methods and contents borrowed
from other sciences, others invented by the scholars themselves. To better view the various turns
the discipline has taken, the development of sociology may be divided into four periods: the
establishment of the discipline from the late 19th century until World War I, interwar
consolidation, explosive growth from 1945 to 1975, and the subsequent period of segmentation.

Founding the discipline

Some of the earliest sociologists developed an approach based on Darwinian evolutionary

theory. In their attempts to establish a scientifically based academic discipline, a line of creative
thinkers, including Herbert Spencer, Benjamin Kidd, Lewis H. Morgan, E.B. Tylor, and L.T.
Hobhouse, developed analogies between human society and the biological organism. They
introduced into sociological theory such biological concepts as variance, natural selection, and
inheritance—asserting that these evolutionary factors resulted in the progress of societies from
stages of savagery and barbarism to civilization by virtue of the survival of the fittest. Some
writers believed that these stages of society could be seen in the developmental stages of each
individual. Strange customs were explained by assuming that they were throwbacks to useful
practices of an earlier period, such as the make-believe struggle sometimes enacted between the
bridegroom and the bride’s relatives reflecting the earlier custom of bride capture.

In its popular period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, social Darwinism, along with the
doctrines of Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus, touted unrestricted competition and laissez-faire
so that the “fittest” would survive and civilization would continue to advance. Although the
popularity of social Darwinism waned in the 20th century, the ideas on competition and
analogies from biological ecology were appropriated by the Chicago School of sociology (a
University of Chicago program focusing on urban studies, founded by Albion Small in 1892) to
form the theory of human ecology that endures as a viable study approach.

Replacing Darwinist determinism

Since the initial interest in evolutionary theory, sociologists have considered four deterministic
theories to replace social Darwinism. This search for new approaches began prior to World War I
as emphasis shifted from economic theory to geographic, psychological, and cultural theory—
roughly in that order.
Economic determinism

The first theory, economic determinism, reflects the interest many sociologists had in the thought
of Karl Marx, such as the idea that social differentiation and class conflict resulted from
economic factors. This approach had its greatest popularity in Europe, where it remained a strong
influence on some sociologists until the 1980s. It did not gain a significant foothold in the United
States, because American society was thought to be socially mobile, classless, and oriented to the
individual. This neglect of Marxism by American sociologists, however, was not due to scholarly
ignorance. Sociologists of all periods had read Marx as well as Charles A. Beard’s economic
interpretation of American history and the work of Werner Sombart (who had been a Marxist in
his early career). Instead, in the 1960s, neo-Marxism—an amalgam of theories of stratification
by Marx and Max Weber—gained strong support among a minority of sociologists. Their
enthusiasm lasted about 30 years, ebbing with the breakup of the Soviet system and the
introduction of postindustrial doctrines that linked class systems to a bygone industrial era. The
persistence of social and economic inequality is now explained as a complex outcome of factors,
including gender, race, and region, as well as global trade and national politics.

Human ecology

Representing the second theoretical area, human geographers—Ellsworth Huntington, Ellen

Semple, Friedrich Ratzel, Paul Vidal de La Blache, Jean Brunhes, and others—emphasized the
impact of climate and geography on the evolution of those societies that flourished in temperate
zones. Their theories found no place in mainstream sociological thought, however, except for a
brief period in the 1930s when human ecology sought to explain social change by linking
environmental conditions with demographic, organizational, and technological factors. Human
ecology remains a small but vital part of sociology today.

Social psychology

Psychological theories emphasized instincts, drives, motives, temperament, intelligence, and

human sociability in social behaviour and societal evolution. Social psychology modifies these
concepts to explain the broader phenomena of social interaction or small group behaviour.
Although American sociology even today retains an individualistic (and therefore psychological)
bias, by the 1930s sociologists had concluded that psychological factors alone could not explain
the behaviour of larger groups and societies.

Cultural theory

Finally, cultural theories of the 1930s emphasized human ability to innovate, accumulate, and
diffuse culture. Heavily influenced by social and cultural anthropology, many sociologists
concluded that culture was the most important factor in accounting for its own evolution and that
of society. By 1940 cultural and social explanations of societal growth and change were
accepted, with economic, geographic, and biopsychological factors playing subsidiary roles.
Early schools of thought

Early functionalism

Scholars who established sociology as a legitimate social science were careful to distinguish it
from biology and psychology, fields that had also begun to generalize about human behaviour.
They did this by developing specific methods for the study of society. French sociologist Émile
Durkheim (1858–1917), prominent in this regard, argued that various kinds of interactions
between individuals bring about certain new properties (sui generis) not found in separate
individuals. Durkheim insisted that these “social facts,” as he called them—collective
sentiments, customs, institutions, nations—should be studied and explained on a distinctly
societal level (rather than on an individual level). To Durkheim the interrelations between the
parts of society contributed to social unity—an integrated system with life characteristics of its
own, exterior to individuals yet driving their behaviour. By positing a causal direction of social
influence (from group to individual rather than the reverse, the model accepted by most
biologists and psychologists of the time), Durkheim gave a much-needed framework to the new
science of sociology. Some writers called this view “functionalism,” although the term later
acquired broader meanings.

Durkheim pointed out that groups can be held together on two contrasting bases: mechanical
solidarity, a sentimental attraction of social units or groups that perform the same or similar
functions, such as preindustrial self-sufficient farmers; or organic solidarity, an interdependence
based on differentiated functions and specialization as seen in a factory, the military,
government, or other complex organizations. Other theorists of Durkheim’s period, notably
Henry Maine and Ferdinand Tönnies, made similar distinctions—status and contract (Maine) and
Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (Tönnies)—and predicted that civilization would progress along
the lines of specialization, contractual relations, and Gesellschaft.

Later anthropologists, especially Bronisław Malinowski and A.R. Radcliffe-Brown, developed a

doctrine of functionalism that emphasized the interrelatedness of all parts of society. They
theorized that a change in any single element would produce a general disturbance in the whole
society. This doctrine eventually gained such a following among social anthropologists that some
advocated a policy of complete noninterference, even with objectionable practices in preliterate
societies (such as cannibalism or head-hunting), for fear that eliminating the practice might
produce far-reaching social disorganization.

The functionalist-conflict debate

American sociology began undergoing significant development in the 1940s. The monumental
growth of university enrollment and research after World War II was fueled by generous federal
and private funding of research. Sociologists sought to enhance their status as scientists by
pursuing empirical research and by conducting qualitative analysis of significant social
problems. Many universities developed large research organizations that spurred important
advances in survey research application, measurement, and social statistics. At the forefront were
Columbia University (focusing on cultural surveys) and the University of Chicago (specializing
in quantitative analysis of social conditions and detailed studies of urban problems). The struggle
over the meaningful use of statistics and theory in research began at this time and remained a
continuing debate in the discipline.

The gap between empirical research and theory persisted, in part because functionalist theory
seemed divorced from the empirical research programs that defined mid-20th-century sociology.
Functionalism underwent some modification when sociologist Talcott Parsons enunciated the
“functional prerequisites” that any social system must meet in order to survive: developing
routinized interpersonal arrangements (structures), defining relations to the external
environment, fixing boundaries, and recruiting and controlling members. Along with Robert K.
Merton and others, Parsons classified such structures on the basis of their functions. This
approach, called structural-functional analysis (and also known as systems theory), was applied
so broadly that Marion Levy and Kingsley Davis suggested it was synonymous with the
scientific study of social organization.

That structural-functional emphasis changed in the 1960s, however, with new challenges to the
functionalist notion that a society’s survival depended on institutional practices. This belief,
along with the notion that the stratification system selected the most talented and meritorious
individuals to meet society’s needs, was seen by some as a conservative ideology that
legitimated the status quo and thereby prevented social reform. It also ignored the potential of the
individual within society. In a response to the criticism of structural-functionalism, some
sociologists proposed a “conflict sociology.” In this view, the dominant institutions repress the
weaker groups. This view gained prominence in the United States with the social turmoil of the
civil rights struggle and the Vietnam War over the 1960s and ’70s and prompted many younger
sociologists to adopt this neo-Marxist view. Their interpretation of class conflict seemed
consistent with the principal tenet of general conflict theory: that conflict pervades all of society,
including the family, the economy, polity, and education.

Rising segmentation of the discipline

The early schools of thought each presented a systematic formulation of sociology that implied
possession of exclusive truth and that involved a conviction of the need to destroy rival systems.
By 1975 the era of growth, optimism, and surface consensus in sociology had come to an end.
The functionalist-conflict debate signaled further and permanent divisions in the discipline, and
virtually all textbooks presented it as the main theoretical divide, despite Lewis A. Coser’s
widely known proposition that social conflict, while divisive, also has an integrating and
stabilizing effect on society. Conflict is not necessarily negative, argued Coser in The Functions
of Social Conflict (1936), because it can ultimately foster social cohesiveness by identifying
social problems to be overcome. In the late 1970s, however, attention to other, everyday social
processes such as those elaborated by the Chicago School (competition, accommodation, and
assimilation) ceased appearing in textbooks. In its extreme form, conflict theory helped revive
the critical theory of the Frankfurt School that wholly rejected all sociological theories of the
time as proponents of the status quo. These theoretical divisions themselves became
institutionalized in the study and practice of sociology, which suggested that debates on approach
would likely remain unresolved.
Major modern developments

One of the consequences of the functionalist-conflict divide, recognized by the 1970s as

unbridgeable, was a decline in general theory building. Others were growing specialization and
controversy over methodology and approach. Communication between the specialties also
diminished, even as ideological disputes and other disagreements persisted within the specialty
areas. New academic journals were introduced to meet the needs of the emerging specializations,
but this further obscured the core of the discipline by causing scholars to focus on
microsociological issues. Interestingly, theory building grew within the specialties—fractured as
they were—especially as international comparative research increased contact with other social
sciences.

Social stratification
Since social stratification is the most binding and central concern of sociology, changes in the
study of social stratification reflect trends in the entire discipline. The founders of sociology—
including Weber—thought that the United States, unlike Europe, was a classless society with a
high degree of upward mobility. During the Great Depression, however, Robert and Helen Lynd,
in their famous Middletown (1937) studies, documented the deep divide between the working
and the business classes in all areas of community life. W. Lloyd Warner and colleagues at
Harvard University applied anthropological methods to study the Social Life of a Modern
Community (1941) and found six social classes with distinct subcultures: upper upper and lower
upper, upper middle and lower middle, and upper lower and lower lower classes. In 1953 Floyd
Hunter’s study of Atlanta, Georgia, shifted the emphasis in stratification from status to power; he
documented a community power structure that controlled the agenda of urban politics. Likewise,
C. Wright Mills in 1956 proposed that a “power elite” dominated the national agenda in
Washington, a cabal comprising business, government, and the military.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, research in social stratification was influenced by the attainment
model of stratification, initiated at the University of Wisconsin by William H. Sewell. Designed
to measure how individuals attain occupational status, this approach assigned each occupation a
socioeconomic score and then measured the distance between sons’ and fathers’ scores, also
using the educational achievement of fathers to explain intergenerational mobility. Peter M. Blau
and Otis Dudley Duncan used this technique in the study published as The American
Occupational Structure (1967).

Attempting to build a general theory, Gerhard Lenski shifted attention to whole societies and
proposed an evolutionary theory in Power and Privilege (1966) demonstrating that the dominant
forms of production (hunting and gathering, horticulture, agriculture, and industry) were
consistently associated with particular systems of stratification. This theory was enthusiastically
accepted, but only by a minority of sociologists. Addressing the contemporary world, Marion
Levy theorized in Modernization and the Structures of Societies (1960) that underdeveloped
nations would inevitably develop institutions that paralleled those of the more economically
advanced nations, which ultimately would lead to a global convergence of societies. Challenging
the theory as a conservative defense of the West, Immanuel Wallerstein’s The Modern World
System (1974) proposed a more pessimistic world-system theory of stratification. Wallerstein
averred that advanced industrial nations would develop most rapidly and thereby widen global
inequality by holding the developing nations in a permanent state of dependency.

Having been challenged as a male-dominated approach, traditional stratification theory was

massively reconstructed in the 1970s to address the institutional gender inequalities found in all
societies. Rae Lesser Blumberg, drawing on the work of Lenski and economist Esther Boserup,
theorized the basis of persistent inequality in Stratification, Socioeconomic, and Sexual
Inequality (1978). Janet Saltzman Chafetz took economic, psychological, and sociological
factors into account in Gender Equity: An Integrated Theory of Stability and Change (1990).
Traditional theories of racial inequality were challenged and revised by William Julius Wilson in
The Truly Disadvantaged (1987). His book uncovered mechanisms that maintained segregation
and disorganization in African American communities. Disciplinary specialization, especially in
the areas of gender, race, and Marxism, came to dominate sociological inquiry.

Interdisciplinary influences
The significant growth of sociological inquiry after World War II prompted interest in historical
and political sociology. Charles Tilly in From Mobilization to Revolution (1978), Jack Goldstone
in Revolutions: Theoretical, Comparative and Historical Studies (1993), and Arthur
Stinchcombe in Constructing Social Theories (1987) made comparative studies of revolutions
and proposed structural theories to explain the origins and spread of revolution. Sociologists who
brought international and historical perspectives to their study of institutions such as education,
welfare, religion, the family, and the military were forced to reconsider long-held theories and
methodologies. As was the case in almost all areas of specialization, new journals were founded.

Sociological specialties were enriched by contact with other social sciences, especially political
science and economics. Political sociology, for example, studied the social basis of party voting
and partisan politics, spurring comparison of decision-making processes in city, state, and
national governments. Still, sociologists split along ideological lines, much as they had in the
functionalist-conflict divide, with some reporting that decisions were made pluralistically and
democratically and others insisting that decisions were made by economic and political elites.
Eventually, voting and community power studies were abandoned by sociologists, and those
areas were left largely to political scientists.

From its inception, the study of social movements looked closely at interpersonal relations
formed in the mobilization phase of collective action. Beginning in the 1970s, scholars focused
more deeply on the long-term consequences of social movements, especially on evaluating the
ways such movements have propelled societal change. The rich area of historical and
international research that resulted includes the study of social turmoil’s influence on New Deal
legislation; the rise, decline, and resurrection of women’s rights movements; analysis of both
failed and successful revolutions; the impact of government and other institutions on social
movements; national differences in how social movements spur discontent; the response of
nascent movements to political changes; and variations in the rates of growth and decline of
movements over time and in different nations. In short, countering the general trend, social
movement research became better integrated into other specialties, especially in political and
organizational sociology.