History of sociology
Origins
The emergence of the " Sociology " under this name is closely associated with the development of civil society formation in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries as well as the forming industrial society.
Proto sociology
But even occur sociological analysis, since authors have written works strongly sociological character in ancient times. Name can be about Xenophanes, Polybius, Ibn Khaldun, Giambattista Vico and Adolph Freiherr Knigge.
When establishing a bound on theory and empirical single science, which did not follow guidelines, had the sociology originated in the theory of action Niccolo Machiavelli, in the moral philosophy of Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson and the early socialists such as Claude -Henri de Saint -Simon; further in the action theories of German idealism that affect sociological explanations and their epistemological orientations until today.
Immediate precursors are the science of history, jurisprudence, political economy, but also of journalism and the Policeywissenschaften.
Her precursor Karl Marx is now interpreted as a sociological classic, well laid Friedrich Engels ' The Condition of the Working Class in England " as early as 1844 an important, though, dedicated ' sociological study. Marx and Engels is especially therefore assign a Co-founder of modern sociology, because both (especially Hegel ) going on to say in her book of 1845, The German Ideology, clearly from philosophy and a " positive science " does, however, the empirical analysis of to interpret reality and facts procedurally, where the dialectic to a specifically Marxian dialectic is that says little more than the social process in terms of social evolution. A simple positivism is avoided.
Sociology since Comte
The word " sociology " Auguste Comte coined but not until the mid-19th century - composed of the Latin socius (shared) and the Greek λόγος ( lógos, word). He envisioned a kind of social physics, a building on a few universal laws ( "positive" ) science of the social. You rejected Comte's ideas quite quickly - his term " sociology " was.
As the founder of sociology in particular Max Weber and Émile Durkheim be lifted out in today's professional discourse. In its early days have established sociology as the Englishman Herbert Spencer, the Pole Ludwig Gumplovicz, the Italian Vilfredo Pareto and the Germans Ferdinand Tönnies and Georg Simmel.
Development in Germany
In Germany in 1887 appeared the first study to justify the present compartment sociology, " Community and Society " by Ferdinand Tönnies. He is considered, along with Georg Simmel and Max Weber, as the founder of German sociology and was until 1933 the first president, founded in 1909 the German Society for Sociology. The first ordinary sociology professor held in the newly proclaimed Republic of Germany since 1919 Franz Oppenheimer.
Sociology in the sense described above could be in Germany under National Socialism not develop further: even a very old as Tönnies they threw from the service. Many other younger, partly Jewish sociologists, forced to emigrate later contributed, important contributions to the development of the subject in the United States, but also, for example, in Switzerland, Turkey and New Zealand. The University colleague Hanna Meuter, also victims of officials Laws of 1933, lamented in 1948 that are not unaffected by the former 150 members of the " German Society for Sociology " more than half, by the destruction process of the time, are no longer with us. "
On the other hand, the " German school of sociology " was expanded under the Nazis in some areas of empiricism and as an ideological pillar of belief ( see Ernst Lewalter ) - like other sciences also exploited. Professorships at German universities were renamed part in such of Philosophy ( Arnold Gehlen ), Political Science ( Hans Freyer ) or Other. Many sociology professors were members of the NSDAP or dominated by their professional organizations, such as the NSD covenant.
Until the 1960s were sociological chairs, as measured by the later expansion, relatively rare, then won the sociology of social importance in the Federal Republic of Germany; on the basis of which and in the politics of educational expansion there were numerous Chair and Institutional ups. Here we must mention in particular the controversial by the then very influential, but also because of its Nazi past sociologist Helmut Schelsky inaugurated University of Bielefeld foundation, which is still regarded as a sociological emphasis. In the wake of the student movement in the second half of the 1960s, the number of sociology students by leaps and bounds.
In the GDR, the so-called bourgeois sociology was attacked massively. It established a Marxist-Leninist sociology, the inside also acted in the FRG. With the collapse of the GDR started there many new professorships. Meanwhile, fall sociological Chairs and partly all institutions increased to suffer cuts.
Especially the Frankfurt School ( Critical Theory ) with names such as Theodor W. Adorno - Influential, even at the international sociological debate, Helmut Schelsky (see the Leipzig School ) were in the post-war period initially and René König, from about 1965 - and even more so and later Jürgen Habermas and Oskar Negt. In the recent time is particularly draw attention to the systems theory of Niklas Luhmann.
Internationally
A particularly large contribution to development of sociology have French intellectuals made , starting with proto sociologists of the Enlightenment such as Jean -Jacques Rousseau, then Claude -Henri de Saint -Simon, about his student Auguste Comte and Emile Durkheim, which extends over the equally significant Gabriel Tarde Arnold van Gennep and was able to put across, over Marcel Mauss and Maurice Halbwachs to contemporary French sociologists and philosophers such as Pierre Bourdieu, Jean Baudrillard and Michel Foucault.
Furthermore, from the UK Herbert Spencer, Max Gluckman and Anthony Giddens, from Italy Vilfredo Pareto, from Poland Ludwig Gumplovicz and Bronisław Malinowski, from the Netherlands Rudolf Steinmetz, from Brazil Gilberto Freyre mentioned.
Are as important milestones in the development of sociology Thorstein Veblen for the North American region, then the sociological Chicago School of Robert Ezra Park, the name of Talcott Parsons established structural functionalism and the strongly oriented towards economic assumptions of rational choice theory. Unlike in Britain, where a subsequent problems of colonialism of thanks to powerful social anthropology ( social anthropology ) sociology i e p strongly prevented her advent. Also the Symbolic interactionism and ethnomethodology were brought from the U.S. to Germany. The influence of sociology in particular the United States was clearly noticeable in the re- establishment of sociology in the Federal Republic of Germany - often in the form of a re - import.
Sociology is a globally institutionalized science today. This is shown by the existence of the International Sociological Association (ISA ) and its world congresses, as well as in an increasing Looking over the edge of nation-state 'container ' on world society and globalization processes. Individual surveys, such as the Indian or Australian sociology, however, are still rare.