Introduction

to
Sociology

Dr. Alma Míra Demszky Bevezetés a szociológiába

 What is Sociology?
• Window to the world: perception and explication of the
proximate and broader world around us
• Analysing the societal factors influencing the life of the
individuum
• Sociologists investigate the stucture of groups,
organisations, and societies, and how people interact within
these structures
• Definition of the American Sociological Association:
Sociology is the study of social life, social change, and the
social causes and consequences of human behaviour

Dr. Alma Míra Demszky

 Sociological Imagination

C. Wrigth Mills called

sociological imagination
“...the vivid awareness of
the relationship between
private experience and the
wider society.”

C.W.Mills, 1916-1962

Dr. Alma Míra Demszky

 Sociological imagination
• historical
• anthropological

• critical sensitivity:

„Sociological imagination makes it possible to

break free from the straightjacket of thinking only
in terms of the type of society we know in the
here and now.” Anthony Giddens

Dr. Alma Míra Demszky

 Sociology and Common Sense
• Individual perception
• Social imagination

• Common sense assumptions are based on limited

observation
• Sociology as a scientific approach has its predefined
methodology
• Sociology
1. Makes methodologically controlled observations
2. Understands and explains and those empirical data

Dr. Alma Míra Demszky

 Sociology as a Science

„Science is a body of
systematically
arranged knowledge
that shows the
operation of general
laws.”

Dr. Alma Míra Demszky

 Questions

1. What is sociology, where does the name come from?

Which topics does it deal with?

2. What is „sociological imagination”? Who did it call so?

3. What is the role of theory within sociology?

4. What is the difference between socialism and

capitalism?

Dr. Demszky Alma Míra

Individuum and Society
Society
Society

Individuum group

(informal)
groups
Individuum

Dr. Alma Míra Demszky

 Goals of Sociology

1. Description and understanding of a given society

• analysis: general forms and relationships
• diagnosis: given historical cirmcumstances,
forms of manifestation

2. Definition of societal consensus:

law, economics, institutions

3. Revelation of historical development and pathways of

society

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 Birth of Sociology

• Industrial revolution, end of feudalism

• Great French Revolution 1789

• Rousseau, Millar, Marx

• Capitalism, individual achievement superseds birth

• New social order: not given by Good

• Strengthening of the middle classes

Dr. Demszky Alma Míra Bevezetés a szociológiába

 Birth of Sociology II.
• Deep-going social change
• Industrial revolution: urbanization, social restructuring,
new social roles, changing values
• Beginning of capitalism, spreading of entrepreneurship:
advertising, stimulation of consumption, market research,
better exploitation of manpower
• Anomalies: criminality, prostitution, vandalizm, alkoholizm,
suicide, mental trubles
• Social relations were ment to be unalterable, now a result
of historical cimrcumstances

Dr. Demszky Alma Míra

 Questions
1. What is „sociological imagination”? Who did it call so?
2. In what way does the sociological perspective differ
from
3. common sense?
Who was EmileWhich are itsWhat
Durkheim? benefits? And
did he problems?
examine?
Which
4. methods did August
Who was he use?Comte?
Which were
What his
doesmain findings?
positivism mean?
5. What means industrial revolution? Describe its
6. milestones!
Explain the following notions: Cottage industries, linen
fibres, hand loom, hydraulic power, luddites, industrial
espionage, slavery, interchangeable parts, steam power
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 Pre-Industrial societies

• Agrarian societies
• Occupation: agriculture, habitation at villages
• Work and home are one unit, not separated
• Manufactures: Early forms of industry,
mostly decentralized

• Entrepreneurs distributed the work

on subcontractig homes

Dr. Demszky Alma Míra Bevezetés a szociológiába

 Industrial revolution
• Technological advance
• Richard Arkwright (1732-1792) invented a spinning frame
• Centralization of the location of industry, importing workers
to live close to the factories
• Early factories powered by water
wheels
• Unreliable, rivers reducind
volume
• Thomas Newcomen (1664-1729)
invented steam engine

Dr. Demszky Alma Míra

 Industrialization
• James Watt (1736-1819) steam engine
• Reliable, no river needed
to build factories
• More power
• Building factories near
labor force and coal
• Developing heavy
industry in North
England
• Rapid urbanization

Dr. Demszky Alma Míra

 Industrialization II.
• Henry Bessemer (1813-1898) invented the „Bessemer
Converter”
• Making pure steel from
iron, removing impurities
• Steel needed for industry
(railways, bridges,
weaponry)

Dr. Demszky Alma Míra

 Urbanization
• Movement of people from the countryside to large
metropolitain areas. Transition from agriculture to
employment in industry
• Many problems: pollution
(air and water)
• Bad health, dangerous
workplaces
• Working hours 12-16/day
• Bad living conditions

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Dr. Demszky Alma Míra
 Living conditions
• Extensive pollution
• Causing infectious
diseases like smallpox,
typhus, cholera
• Bad housing conditions:
8-10 people sharing one
room, no bathroom
• No waste treatment
• No social security, no
insurances
• Life expectance below 20!
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 Slum in London at 1872

Home of factory workers

Dr. Demszky Alma Míra

“There is no sun and no dusk. Here there is always a dense
cloud of smoke to cover the sun while the light rain turns the dust
into paste…” A German traveler about Manchester in 1814

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 Gemeinschaft vs. Gesellschaft
Ferdinand Tönnies (1855-1936)
Gemeinschaft
• Rural, pre-industrial
communities
• Cohesion, mutual help,
collaboration
• Shared norms and values
• Common ethics of the
community, learned
through socialisation
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Gesellschaft
• Industrial society
• Indvidualisation: No
communities
• No shared norms and
values
• Laws and bureaucracy
• Pragmatic connections
• Everybody looking for his
own (economic) success
 Mechanical vs. organic solidarity
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)

Mechanical solidarity Organic solidarity

• Rural, pre-industrial
communities
• Many working at similar
types of employment
• Hence shared values
• Importance of nature,
determining work
priorities, cohesion
through collective
consciousness
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• Industrial society
• Differentiation through labor
division
• Functional relations
• Impersonality of social life
• Confusion regarding norms
• Anomie
 Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
• First professor of sociology
• First concept of social functionalism:
Society is more than the sum of its parts
• Social facts independent from individuals
• New statistical method: multivariant
analysis
• Norms, Anomie

• Researching suicide patterns

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 Industrial revolution

Dr. Demszky Alma Míra

 Talcott Parsons (1902-1979)
• Functionalism
• Sociology of organisations
• System functions according to order or
pattern
• Patterned relationships among all
parts of the system

• Social order achieved through value consensus, not rules or

force
• Institutions important in promoting values

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Similarities between organism and society

The body Institutions

Each Organ has a Institutions have a
unique function unique function
All the bits essentially
All institutions work
work together
together harmoniously
harmoniously
Organs are The Organic Institutions are
interdependent Analogy interdependent
Has an identifiable Has an identifiable
boundary boundary
The sum is greater than The sum is greater than
its parts its parts.
Normal: low rates social
Normal: healthy
problems.

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 Functions in society

Dr. Demszky Alma Míra

 Functions in society

Dr. Demszky Alma Míra

 Functions in society

Dr. Demszky Alma Míra

 The function of religion in society
• Emile Durkheim: analysis of suicide data – Catholics lower
suicide rate than Protestans, due to higher degree of social
integration
• Marx: Religion is distraction from central issues of life, falso
hope to cover social inequalities
• Max Weber: „interpretative sociology”, connection between
Protestantism and capitalism, successful enterprise sign of
Gods selection
• Weber: continuum from church – denomination - sect

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 Karl Marx (1818-1883)

• Antagonistic conflict between working

class and capitalists
• Class struggle, which will end only in
communism
• Historical materialism: primacy of
material conditions for the formation of
consciuosness
• Exploitation, alienation: separation of the worker from the
product of his labor
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 Industrial revolution

• Questions

• Which historical period

• Why „revolution”
• Which driving forces, technologies
• Which countries
• Social impact of technical progress
• Changes in everyday life
• Opposition, critique

Dr. Demszky Alma Míra Bevezetés a szociológiába

 Industrial revolution II.
• What do the following data/names/notions mean?
Cottage industries, 1760, linen fibres, hand loom, spinning jenny, water frame,
hydaulic power, spinning mule, 1811, power loom, flying shuttle, luddites,
industrial espionage, cotton gin, slavery, interchangeable parts, blacksmith,
pollution, mill-girls, boarding house, steam power, James Watt, steel, Thomas
Newcomen, coal mines, Henry Bessemer, Friedrich Engels,
• Which percentage of the population lived in rural areas before industrial
revolution? And after?
• How was the stratification of the society before i.r.?
• How was public education before i.r.?
• How was textile production organised before i.r.?
• When and where were the first factories built? Why did this change the society?
• How did industrial revolution come to the US?
• How did steam power change transportation and agriculture?
• In which ways did the industrial revolution damage the environment?

Dr. Demszky Alma Míra Bevezetés a szociológiába

 Urbanisation questions
• What do we mean by the term „urbanisation”? When and why did it happen?
• How where communities organised in rural areas? How was shortage handled in
these communities?
• Explain the terms „Gemeinschaft” and „Gesellschaft” and the theory behind!
• How did Ernest Burgess desribe large cities? What do we mean by
„gentrification”?

Dr. Demszky Alma Míra Bevezetés a szociológiába

 French revolution

• Questions

• When
• Absolutism, feudalism
• Why so important for human history
• Enligthment
• Civil rights
• Napoleonic wars

Dr. Demszky Alma Míra Bevezetés a szociológiába

 Modernization worldwide
• Questions about your home country:
• Did you have an industrial revolution in your country?
• When? Which industrial sectors were leading?
• Did it spark a social change, or new values, new social
roles or classes?
• What is the percentage of urbanization in your country?
How many percent live in cities, how many in the
countryside? What are the biggest cities?
• Does your contry has social problems – pauperism,
prostitution, criminality, alkoholizm?

Dr. Demszky Alma Míra Bevezetés a szociológiába

 Democratization worldwide
• Questions about your home country:

• Did you have a big revolution, like the French Revolution

in your country?
• When? Was it successful?
• Did ideas like equalitiy, fraternity emerge?
• Since when is your counrty independent?
• Do you have a democracy?
• How much are Human Rights respected in your country?

Dr. Demszky Alma Míra Bevezetés a szociológiába

 Founding the European Union

• Second World War 1939-45

• Aim: To end the bloody wars between neighbours
• 1950: European Coal and Steel Community

• Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the

Netherlands

• Cold War, bloody end of the Revolution in Hungary in 1956

• 1957: Treaty of Rome creates the European Economic

Community (EEC) or ‘Common Market’
Dr. Demszky Alma Míra Bevezetés a szociológiába
 The growing Union
• 1960-69: quick econic growth
• No taxes, joint food control
• 1968: Riots in Paris, Berlin and Prague

• Social change, the 68 Generation

• First Enlargement in 1973:

Denmark, United Kingdom, Ireland
• End of the last rigth-wing dictatorships: overthrow of Salazar
in 1974 in Portugal, 1975 death of Marco in Spain
Dr. Demszky Alma Míra Bevezetés a szociológiába
 The End of the Cold War
• 1980: Gdansk shipyard strikes, Solidarnosc, Lech Walesa
• Enlargements: 1981 Greece, 1986 Spain and Portugal
• 1986: „Single Market” through the Single European Act

• 09.11.1989: Berlin Wall pulled down, border between East

and West Germany opened for the first time in 28 years
• 1993 'four freedoms' of: movement of goods, services,
people and money  
• 1993 Maastricht Treaty, 1999 Treaty of Amsterdam  

Dr. Demszky Alma Míra Bevezetés a szociológiába

 Test on the EU
1. When was the European Coal and Steel Community founded?
2. Why was Europe divided? How was it called?
3. What is the Common Market? When was it created?
4. What was the economic benefit of the european unification?
5. What is the Nato? Which countries and when created it?
6. What is the counterpart to the Nato? When was it founded?
7. When was the Berlin Wall destroyed? Which changes happened
after?
8. What are the „four freedoms”?

Dr. Demszky Alma Míra

 Test on the EU
1. Which historical experiences lead to the birth of the EU? When?
How was it called? Which were the initiating nations?
2. How was Europe splitted after 1945? What was the „Iron courtain”?
3. What is EEC? Which Treaty grounded the EEC?
4. Write names and nationality of „grounding fathers” of the EU. What
was their task?
5. Why could the EEC introduce economic prosperity? What was the
economic benefit of unification?
6. When happened the first enlargement? Which countries?
7. What is the 1968 Generation?
8. What is „Solidarnosc? What happened in Eastern Europe?
9. What happened in 1989?
10. What is the Maastricht Treaty?

Dr. Demszky Alma Míra