Unit - I

Chapter 1 - Relationship of Sociology and Education

Question- Discuss the scope of Sociology.

Related Short Answer Question

Define the Sociology.
Discuss formal school of Sociology

Ans.

In the broadest sense, Sociology is the study of human interactions and inter-relations, their conditions and consequences. Thus ideally Sociology has for its field the whole life of man in society, all the activities whereby men maintained themselves in the struggle for existence, the rules and regulations which define their relations to each other, the systems of knowledge and belief, art and morals and any other capacities and habits acquired and developed in the course of their activities as members of society. But this is too wide a scope for any science to deal with properly. An attempt has, therefore, been made to limit and demarcate the field of Sociology. There are two main schools of thought among sociologists on this issue.

One group of writers headed by German sociologist, Simmel, demarcates Sociology clearly from other branches of social study and confines it to the enquiry into certain defined aspects of human relationship. They regard sociology as pure and independent. The other group maintains that the field of social investigation is too wide for any one science and that if any progress is to be made there must be specialisation and division and insists that in addition to special social sciences such as Economics, Anthropology, History etc. There is need also of a general social science. i.e. Sociology whose function it would be to inter-relate the results of the special social sciences and to deal with the general conditions of social life. In the opinion of this group Sociology is a general science.

Specialistic or Formalistic School

Simmel’s view : According to Simmel, the distinction between Sociology and other special sciences is that it deals with the same topics as they from a different angle—from the angle of different modes of social relationships. Social relationships, such as competition, subordination, division of labour etc. are exemplified in different spheres of social life such as economic, the political and even the religious, moral or artistic but the business of Sociology is to disentangle these forms of social relationships and to study them in abstraction. Thus according to Simmel, Sociology is a specific social which describes, classifies, analyses and delineates the forms of social relationships.

Small’s view : According to Small, Sociology does not undertake to study all the activities of society. Every science has a delimited scope. The scope of sociology is the study of the generic forms of social relationships, behaviours and activities, etc.

Max Weber’s view : Max Weber also makes out a definite field for Sociology. According to him, the aim of Sociology is to interpret or understand social behaviour. But social behaviour does not cover the whole field of human relations. Indeed not all human inter-actions are social. For instance, a collision between two cyclists is in itself merely a natural phenomenon, but their efforts to avoid each other or the language they use after the event constitute true social behaviour. Sociology is thus, according to him, concerned with the analysis and classification of types of social relationships.

He interpreted social processes quantitatively and gave a mathematical formula. According to him :-

P = A × S
P = Social Processes
A = Attitude
S = Situation

Attitude is made up of

A = N × E (N = Basic social nature), (E = Previous experience)
S = B × A (B = Geographical conditions), (A = attitude of the participants)

Thus, according to the formalistic school, sociology studies one specific aspect of social relationships, i.e., their forms in their abstract nature, and not in any concrete situation. A comparison is drawn between the forms of social relationships and a bottle. A bottle may be either of plastic or any other material. It may contain milk, water etc. but the contents of the bottle do not change the form of bottle. Similarly, the forms of social relationships do not change with the change in the content of social relationships, for example, the study of competition- a form of social relationship will not make any difference whether we study it in the political field or economic field. Sociology has been compared with Geometry. Just as Geometry studies about the forms of physical things triangular, rectangular, square or circular etc., similarly Sociology studies about the forms of social relationships.

Criticism of Formalistic School

The formalistic school can be criticised on the following grounds :

1. It has narrowed the scope of sociology : The formalistic school has limited the field of sociology to merely abstract forms. Sociology besides studying the general forms of social relationships should also study the concrete contents of social life.

2. Abstract forms separated from concrete relations cannot be studied : Ginsberg is of view that Simmel’s thesis that function of Sociology is to study the social relationships in abstraction is not correct. He maintains that a study of social relationships would remain barren. If it is conducted in the abstract without full knowledge of the terms to which in concrete life they relate. The study of competition, for example, will be hardly of any use unless it is studied in concrete form in economic life or in the world of art and knowledge. He is of the opinion that the scope of Sociology should not be limited to the study of social relationships in general but it should be widened by the addition of the study of these relationships as embodied in the different spheres of culture under special sociologies like the Sociology of Religion, of Art, of Laws and of Knowledge etc. Actually social forms cannot be abstracted from the content at all, since social forms keep on changing as the content change.

3. The conception of pure sociology is impractical : The formalistic school has conceived of pure sociology but none of the sociologists has so far been able to construct a pure sociology. As a matter of fact, no social science can be studied in isolation from other social sciences.

4. Sociology alone does not study social relationships : Sociology is not the only science which studies social relationships, Political Science, Economics and International Law also study social relationships.

Synthetic School

The synthetic school wants to make sociology a synthesis of the social sciences or a general science. Durkheim, Hobhouse and Soroking subscribe to this view.

Durkheim’s view : According to Durkheim, Sociology has three principal divisions, viz., (i) Social Morphology. (ii) Social Physiology and (iii) General Sociology. Social Morphology is concerned with geographical or territorial basis of the life of people and its relation to types of social organisations and the problems of populations such as its volume and density, local distribution and the like.

Social physiology is divided into a number of branches such as Sociology of Religion, of Morals, of Laws, of Economic life, of Language etc. Every one of these branches of Sociology deals with a set of social facts, that is activities related to the various social groups.

The function of the General Sociology is to discover the general character of these social facts and to determine whether there are any general social laws of which the different laws established by the special social sciences are particular expressions.

Karl Mannheim’s view : Karl Mannheim divides Sociology into two main sections (i) Systematic and General Sociology, and (ii) Historical Sociology. Systematic and General Sociology describes one by one the main factors of living together as far as they may be found in every kind of society. The historical sociology deals with the historical variety and actuality of the general forms of society. Historical Sociology falls into two main sections: firstly comparative sociology and secondly, social dynamics. Comparative Sociology deals mainly with the historical variations of the same phenomenon and tries to find by comparison general features as separated from industrial features. Social dynamics deals with the interrelations between the various social factors and institutions in a certain given society, for instance, in a primitive society.

Ginsberg’s view. Ginsberg has summed up the chief functions of sociology as following :

Firstly : Sociology seeks to provide a classification of types and forms of social relationships especially of those which have come to be defined institutions and associations. Secondly, it tries to determine the relation between different parts of factors of social life, for example, the economic and political, the moral and the religious, the moral and the legal, the intellectual and the social elements. Thirdly, it endeavours to disentangle the fundamental conditions of social change and persistence and to discover sociological principles governing social life.

Conclusion : Thus, the scope of Sociology is very wide. It is a general science but it is also a special science. As a matter of fact, the subject matter of all social sciences is society. What distinguishes them from one another is their viewpoint; political science studies it from political viewpoint while history is a study of society from a historical point of view. Sociology alone studies social relationships and society itself. MacIver correctly remarks, “what distinguishes each from each is the selective interest.” Sociology studies all the various aspects of society such as social traditions, social processes, social morphology, social control, social pathology, effect of extra-social elements upon, social relationship etc. Actually, it is neither possible nor essential to delimit the scope of sociology.

...Prev | Next...