other students from the city teased the favela kids and made them feel unwelcome. Most of his friends dropped out before he did. Hector often missed school because of other obligations: looking for part-time work, helping a sick relative, or taking care of a younger sibling. The immediate need to put food on the table outweighed the long-term value of staying in school. What is the bottom line for Hector and millions like him? Because of his limited education and work skills, obligations to his family, and limited opportunities, he most likely will continue to live in poverty along with millions of others in this situation.
▲ Slum dwellers of São Paulo, Brazil. Hector lives in a neighborhood with shelters made of available materials such as boxes, with no electricity or running water and poor sanitation.
© Getty/Christopher Pillitz/Contributor
Sociologists are interested in factors that influence the social world of children like Hector: family, friends, school, community, and the place of one’s nation in the global political and economic structural systems. Sociologists use social theories and scientific methods to examine and understand poverty and many other social issues. In this chapter, you will learn about some of the different data collection methods sociologists use to collect information and the theories they use to make sense of their data.
Sociological research helps us to understand how and why society operates and how we might change it. It can also help you make sense of why people in your family, neighborhood, college campus, and workplace act the way they do. You will, no doubt, find yourself in a situation where conducting a research study will help your organization or community.
This chapter introduces you to the basic tools used to plan studies and gather dependable information on topics of interest. It will also help you understand how sociology approaches research questions. To this end, we begin this chapter by discussing the development of sociology as a discipline and the core principles of sociology’s major theoretical perspectives. We then explore sociology as a science—core ideas that underlie any science: how to collect data, ethical issues involving research, and practical applications and uses of sociological knowledge. We start with the beginnings and emergence of sociology as a field of study.
Development of Sociology
Throughout recorded history, humans have been curious about how and why society operates as it does. Long before the development of science, religion and philosophy influenced the way individuals thought about the world. Both approaches to understanding society had a strong moral tone. For example, Plato’s Republic, written around 400 BCE, outlines plans for an ideal state—complete with government, family, economic systems, class structure, and education—designed to achieve social justice. These philosophers’ opinions were derived from abstract reflection about how the social world should work, but they were not tested scientifically.
The first person on record to suggest a systematic approach to explain the social world was North African Islamic scholar Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406). Khaldun was particularly interested in understanding the feelings of solidarity that held tribal groups together during his day, a time of great conflict and wars (Alagha 2017; Alatas 2006). With this beginning came the rise of modern sociology.
Rise of Modern Sociology
Several conditions from the 1600s to the 1800s gave rise to sociology. First, European nations were imperial powers extending their influence and control by establishing colonies in other cultures. This exposure to other cultures encouraged at least some Europeans to learn more about the people in and around their new colonies. Second, they sought to understand the rapid changes in their own societies brought about by the Industrial Revolution (which began around the middle of the 1700s) and the French Revolution (1789–1799). Finally, advances in the natural sciences demonstrated the value of the scientific method, and some wished to apply this scientific method to social sciences and to understanding the social world.
In the early and mid-1800s, no one had clear, systematic explanations for why the old social structure, which had lasted since the early Middle Ages, was collapsing or why cities were exploding with migrants from rural areas. French society was in turmoil, members of the nobility were being executed, and new rules of justice were taking hold. Churches were made subordinate to the state, equal rights under the law were established for citizens, and democratic rule emerged. These dramatic changes marked the end of the traditional monarchy and the beginning of a new social order.
▲ The Bastille, a state prison in Paris, France, and a symbol of oppression, was seized by the common people during the French Revolution, a social upheaval that forced social analysts to think differently about society and social stability. Today, rallying points for social movements and revolutions such as we see in Venezuela illustrate that uprisings of the common people are still changing societies.
© Getty/DEA/G. DAGLI ORTI
© SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images
In this setting the scientific study of society emerged. Two social thinkers, Henri Saint-Simon (1760–1825) and Auguste Comte (1798–1857), decried the lack of systematic data collection or objective analysis in social thought. These Frenchmen argued that a science of society could help people understand and perhaps control the rapid changes and unsettling revolutions taking place.
Comte officially coined the term sociology in 1838. His basic premise was that common ways of understanding the world at that time, through religious or philosophical speculation about society, did not provide an adequate understanding of how to solve society’s problems. Just as the scientists compiled basic facts about the physical world, so, too, was there a need to gather scientific knowledge about the social world. Only then could leaders systematically apply this scientific knowledge to improve social conditions.
Comte asked two basic questions: What holds society together and gives rise to a stable order rather than anarchy? Further, why and how do societies change? Comte conceptualized society as divided into two parts: (1) social statics, aspects of society that give rise to order, stability, and harmony, and (2) social dynamics, forces that promote change and evolution (even revolution) in society. Comte was concerned with what contemporary sociologists and the social world model in this book refer to as structure (social statics) and process (social dynamics). By understanding these aspects of the social world, Comte felt that leaders could strengthen society and respond appropriately to change. His optimistic belief was that sociology would be the “queen of sciences,” guiding leaders to construct a better social order (Comte [1855] 2003).
Sociology continued developing as scholars tried to understand further changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution. Massive social and economic transformations in the 18th and 19th centuries brought about restructuring and sometimes the demise of political monarchies, aristocracies, and feudal lords. Scenes of urban squalor were common in Great Britain and other industrializing European nations. Machines replaced both agricultural workers and cottage (home) industries because they produced an abundance of goods faster, better, and cheaper. Peasants were pushed off the land by new technologies and migrated to urban areas to find work; at the same time, a powerful new social
