Sociology is one subfield of the social sciences that is broadly defined as “the study of human society” (Conley 2019: 5). That is, sociologists study the systems of organizations that groups of people create to provide for shared needs – things like public services, law and safety, and cultural institutions that create a cohesive group identity. We’ll look at a few examples throughout this chapter.

The questions that sociologists ask about the world may include things like:

• How do attitudes and values affect a person’s behavior?
• What are sources of bonding or conflict among a group of people?
• Which factors are associated with a particular life outcome?
• Why do people prefer one policy option or strategic plan over another?
• What patterns can be observed in the way people think about or experience an issue?

Use the link below to visit the “Why Social Science?” webpage for more examples of social science research in action.

There is considerable overlap between social science fields, including sociology, psychology, political science, economics, and anthropology. One of the major distinctions between sociology and these other disciplines is that sociologists are typically interested in situating a given individual’s experience within a broader field of social dynamics that shape and constrain the courses of action available to us at a given moment in time. The sociological imagination is a term coined by C. Wright Mills (1959) that refers to thinking about the relationship between personal biography and historic forces. Huh? Let me explain.

“Neither the life of an individual  nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both” (C. Wright Mills 1959).We tend to think that things happen in our lives as a consequence of our personal actions because that is what we have the most immediate control over. It is sometimes more difficult for us to see how personal events, problems, or accomplishments unfold within and are impacted by larger organizational, geographic, economic, cultural, and political spheres we are situated within. But when we use our sociological imaginations, we are able to have a better understanding of how events in our society affect us, as well as where other people are coming from. It’s a matter of shifting the focal point away from one’s self (as great you are!) to consider the bigger, more complex contextual picture against which our personal lives are unfolding.

Now that we’ve got some general outlines of the field in place, let’s get into the fascinating historical and methodological details.

A (Really Brief) History of Sociology

Sociology emerged as an academic discipline in Europe during the mid-1800s, which was a really happening time! The Industrial Revolution pulled populations away from dispersed agricultural dwellings and concentrated them in dense urban settings. This transformed the way people lived, worked, played, and otherwise interacted. Additionally, political revolutions in France and the United States demanded new forms of representative governance. At the same time, scientific understanding was ousting traditional religious authority and offering new explanations for everything from illness to natural disasters. With so much going on, early sociologists, like Emile Durkheim, were concerned with how social cohesion, or a sense of community, would be maintained under societal transformation (Ritzer 2011). What would hold people together under this new social order? Read more about Durkheim’s contributions to sociology by opening the linked article, “Understanding Durkheim’s Division of Labor,” below.

Others saw the emergence of industrial capitalism as rife with exploitation and inequality. Karl Marx is credited with founding what’s known as conflict theory, which views the structure of capitalist societies as a source of inequality that benefits some groups at the expense of others (McLellan 2000). While Marx was primarily concerned about how economic inequalities, or class conflict, would drive change in society, others have extended on this to consider how various social statuses, like gender and race, can serve as sources of inequality and conflict that propel change in society.

Conflict theory is a popular lens for interpreting social issues, although Marx’s utopian vision for an egalitarian economic future of communist or socialist design has failed in most practical applications. In contrast, countries that embrace open, free-market economies have experienced steady increases in quality of life (Siegel 2020). So, what did Marx get wrong? He didn’t predict that capitalism would do such a great job of producing a thriving middle-class who are able to live comfortable, healthy lives. He also did not foresee that societies that centralized resources through large state systems would become largely unaccountable to the public, and therefore plagued with corruption. Oopsy-daisy!

Sociology Comes to America

The American sociological tradition diverged somewhat from the European school of thought. The first sociology department was founded in 1892 at the University of Chicago and its early scholars, who were heavily influenced by Christianity, prioritized getting to work on problems affecting the city’s working poor (Ritzer 2011). The Europeans were what we’d (not so politely) call armchair sociologists. They pontificated on the state of the world from the comfort of their ivory towers. Like the Europeans, early American sociologists were concerned about the impacts of the Industrial Revolution and urban development. But unlike Europeans, many of the Americans took to the streets and set out to develop scientific methods that could be applied to understanding – and eventually relieving – social problems.

Jane Addams was a social scientist also located in Chicago who studied urban conditions and in 1889 co-founded a settlement house to help immigrant laborers in the urban core. Hull House served as an organizing base and center for social services (before those formally existed) for immigrants experiencing housing shortages and overcrowding, brutal work conditions, and environmental illnesses. While most sociologists at that time were concerned with how industrial production changed human relationships and power structures, human impacts to the environment were largely ignored. As described in the article, “Hull-House and the ‘Garbage Ladies’ of Chicago,” (below), researchers at the Hull House were some of the early investigators into problems associated with environmental pollution in working-class neighborhoods, workplace exposure to toxic chemicals, and the connection between public infrastructure and public health (NPS 2021).

At a similar point in history, W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the first social scientists to study and write about race relations in the U.S. He pioneered research on rural black Americans and identified failures of the period of Reconstruction following the end of slavery in the U.S. that blocked Black Americans from accessing economic opportunities and social equity (Du Bois 1903). Du Bois was a co-founder of the NAACP, the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the U.S. that promotes racial justice and anti-discrimination policies. Read more about Du Bois’ historic contributions by opening the link to NAACP’s website, below.

The ethnographic tradition of American sociology was what initially captivated me about the field. Books like Gang Leader for a Day (Venkatesh 2008), Righteous Dopefiend (Bourgois and Schonberg 2009), and Flat Broke with Children (Hays 2003) brought dark corners of American culture into the light and introduced me to the moral codes and humanity of what are typically disparaged groups. I was inspired by what I saw as a courage and grit in the sociological field, where researchers confronted problems head-on to understand how people experience and cope with crushing family, community, and societal failures, and ultimately develop solutions that meet people where they’re at without judgment or moralizing. The systematic process through which sociologists uncover knowledge about the social world is the subject of the next chapter.

In Sum

As an academic discipline, sociology emerged in an era of great social upheaval and change, and early sociologists sought to understand the broad impacts these changes would have on how people lived, worked, and played, as well as how they organized to protect their interests. The history of sociological thought established by founders in the discipline provides a conceptual framework that guides empirical research today.