Rise of sociology as an intellectual tradition. Classical tradition in sociology of the XIX century — страница 4

to the actions and motives of people, and peopele were molded and constrained by their social settings. In his work, The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), he demonstrated that law was a social fact, embodied in formal, codified rules and not dependent on humans or on any particular act of law enforcement for its existence. He came to see social norms as regulating people’s behaviour by means of institutionalized values which the human internalized, rather than the society simply acting as an external constraint. In another work, The Division of Labour in Society (1893), E. Durkheim argued against H. Spencer’s understanding of social order in industrial societies. To his mind, a pursuit of self-interest would lead to social instability, as manifest in various forms of

social deviance such as suicide. He distinguished two forms of social order found in primitive and modern societies. In primitive societies he identified mechanical solidarity which was based on common beliefs and consensus found in collective consciousness. As societies become industrialized and more complex, the increasing division of labour destroys mechanical solidarity and moral integration, thus rendering social order problematic. E. Durkheim was well aware that industrial societies exhibited many conflicts and that force was an important factor in preventing social disruption. He believed, however, that in advanced societies a new form of order would arise on the basis of organic solidarity. It would comprise the interdependence of economic ties arising out of

differentiation and specialization within modern economy, a new network of occupational associations such as guilds that would link people to the state, and the emergence of collectively created moral restraints on egoism within these associations. Anyway, the main idea of his work may be expressed in the following statements: division of labour leads to cohesion; division of labour gradually replaces religion as the basis of social cohesion. This process of change gives rise to social difficulties that result in anomie, or feeling of aimlessness or despair. In Suicide (1897), which represents the most influential sociological contribution to this issue, E. Durkheim explained how even apparently individual decisions to commit a suicide could be understood as being affected by

different forms of social solidarity in different social settings. In identifying types of suicide he used the suicide statistics of different societies and different groups within them. Karl Marx (1818-1883) is generally viewed as political scientist, economist and sociologist although he was not of high opinion about the sociology of A. Comte that expressed interests and consciousness of the bourgeoisie. Marxist sociology is materialistic interpretation of history (which F. Engels adapted as dialectical materialism) which was certainly influenced by G. Hegel’s claim that reality (and history) should be viewed dialectically, through a clash of opposing forces. K. Marx asserted that “philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point however is to change

it”, and he clearly dedicated himself to trying to change the world. The researcher believed that he could study history and the society scientifically and discern tendencies of history and the resulting outcome of social conflicts. Marxist analysis of history is based on a distinction between means of production, or land, natural resources, and technology that are necessary for the production of material goods, and social relations of production, i.e. social relationships people enter into as they acquire and use means of production. Together these comprise the mode of production. For K. Marx, the society is a system of social relations (economic, political, legal etc.) where the subjects of social relations are groups of people, or classes and individuals. He asserted that

the economy determines the social structure in the statement about the economic basis and superstructure, i.e. social, cultural and political phenomena are determined by the mode of production. To his mind, economic, cultural, and political changes go together in coherent patterns, and they are linked because economic and technological changes determine political and cultural changes. K. Marx observed that within any given society the mode of production changes, and European societies had progressed from a feudal mode of production to a capitalist one. In general, he believed that the means of production change more rapidly than the relations of production. A proof is that we develop a new technology, such as the Internet, and only later laws to regulate that technology are