FOUNDING FATHERS OF SOCIOLOGY
WEEK 3
COURSE MATERIALS
By Asst. Prof. Dr. Selman Yılmaz
Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406)
A Muslim scholar was born in North Africa and mostly lived there.
A good observer.
Compares primitive and modern societies.
He would be considered as a prominent sociologist in modern sense but mostly not much known in contemporary
academic world.
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–
1859)
Writer of Democracy in America (1835).
Travel across America and cluster his
observations regarding to political life in America.
Great supporter of freedom.
Have concerns regarding centralization
of government.
Auguste Comte (1798–
1857)
Coined the term sociology
Positivism
Evolutionary theory (law) of the three stages:
Theological stage, metaphysical stage, positivistic stage
His sociology does not focus on the
individual but rather takes as its basic
unit of analysis larger entities such as
the family.
Emile Durkheim (1858–
1917)
Many scholars consider him as the real founder of sociology
Interested in religion (this is a common ground for many early sociologists)
Suicide (1897)
Link such an individual behavior as suicide to social causes (social facts), by doing so he made a
persuasive case for the importance of the discipline of sociology.
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912)
Examined primitive society in order to find the roots of religion.
Karl Marx (1818–1883)
An action man. He did not want to only interpret the world but change it.
Not particularly a sociologist.
Interested in entire social world, specifically economy.
Politic economist. Supported communism.
Against capitalism.
Labor theory of value, surplus value,
exploitation of workers, inequalities, alienation, class conflict
Religion is opium of people.
Max Weber (1864–1920)
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904)
Concerned with the impact of religious ideas on the economy
Focused on social class, the economic dimension of stratification.
Religion is not merely an
epiphenomenon. Instead, it had played a key role in the rise of capitalism in the
West.
Georg Simmel (1858–1918)
Understanding interaction among people was one of the major tasks of sociology.
Poverty, fashion
Prostitute, miser, spendthrift, stranger
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
Psychoanalysis
ID, ego, superego
Subconscious
Religion
The Future of an Illusion (1927)
Totem and Taboo (1930)
Civilization and Its Discontents (1930)
Review
Any further comments and questions?
References
