What is Sociology. Theories and Schools in Sociology. Micro-Sociology vs MacroSociology.

World of today- the 21th century marked it's presence overt it. These are times full of doubts, but still, we have the biggest amount of promising chances for a future. This is the world of change, globalisation, social divisions and conflicts. Despite of it, according to history, we have the greatest possibility of creating our lives as we want. How have the world changed so fast? How is it going to influence our lives? Where do we tend? These are questions which are the main concerns of sociology. The science about us and our societies. Sociology is like no other science- it's about people, about us- our life, societies, groups and customs. The scope of sociological study is extremely wide, it starts with analysis of individuals and ends with globalism and global influences. It teach us about the ways, which our lives are affected by, like history or society forces. Sociological thinking allows us to see that events of a single individual reflect some larger issues. For example- a divorce. It can be a very hard process, for someone, who goes through it, but it is also a public issue. In Poland, twenty five percents of marriages get divorced. As every science needs theorems, so do sociology. We need knowledge to interpretate our researches, where to start looking, and at last find an illumination. These thorems must reffer to actual problems and philosophiccal thinking. Since ancient times, people were always interested in sources of their behaviour, why do they act in patricullar ways. Their findings often were passsed down to next generation in form of religious terms. For example to explain how to world was created, what are the natural disasters or show possible ways of behaving, they made myths, or Bible. In fact early thinkers provided illumination into society and human thought, but the start of regular studying of society is dated on the late 1700s and early 1800s. In that time the French Revolution of 1789 and the Industrial Revolution took place in Europe, causing in annihilating of traditional ways of live, motivating thinkers to looking for an understanding of both the social and natural worlds. They have started to use science and development instead of religion to find more actual answers for questions, which even present sociologists look for (What is a human nuture? Why do we change? Why is society structured like this?). Here comes August Comte. He is said to be an inventor of sociology. He invented this word in order to distinguish his own thoughts from the thoughts of his rivals. His ideas reflected the most significiant events of his age (the ones I mentioned before). The French Revolution brought in a lot of changes into society and the growth of industrialization altered the traditional lives of French population. He was trying to explain the laws of social world just as natural science expalined the functioning of physical world. His pursuit for answers and explanation brought him into invention of positivism. Positivism stands that the science: 1) should only be concerned about real objects and research only things, which are available for human mind. 2) should only consider pratical topics- as it is for improving people's lifes. 3) limits to objects, which you can obtain certain knowledge about. 4) takes care of exact issues. 5) works positivie, it isn't restricted only to criticism. By Comte's picture, the positive philosopher is a peson, who understood, that natural sciences brought perfect formula of scientific researching. They use only effective investigations. The positive philosopher avoids "abstract" and "fautless" terms, substituting it with "exact" and "relative". He was mainly inspired by scientists, who carried out the methodological reflection and

British empiricism, especially Daivd Hume. He also owes some of his ideas to french philosopher of Enlightenment, d'Alembert. Plans of social reforms were widespread that time. He even was a friend with a exponent of utopian socialism- Claude-Henrim de Saint-Simon, who probably glomed onto a lot of ideas of young scientist and philosopher. Comte defined the extent of positive philosophy, reducing it to a real existing objects,which we can obtain certain and exact knowledge about ie to the external facts of physical objects. That's why metaphyscics cannot be a subject of reliable science. Philosophy was supposed to be a theoretical base to such designed science, comparing and generalizing knowledge accumulated by researchers. Positivism rejected the inquiries to the existence of God as a matter of uncertain, outside the fair experience. Comte cared about the problem of evolution of lore, and claimed the resaerch phase ("positive") is the greatest stadium of it, runs by the following scheme: 1) theological phase- when people used dieties or unnatural forces to explain the apparitions; 2) metaphysic phase- when people explain apparitions using abstract terms and rational speculation (mostly detached from reality); 3) positive phase- people formulate assertions basing on facts and dependencies of coexistence or precedence between facts. In that phase, people can identify and predict previously uknown facts. This phase is identified with the research phase; Comte has created one of the first theorem of science. He distinguished between abstract science (dealing with laws connecting facts of nature) and exact science (describing facts, eg. mineralogy). As abastract science, he considered the followings: mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistrt, bilogy and sociology. These disciplines are sorted by decreasing scope of research, from astronomy to sociology, accompanied by a growing complexity of the phenomena examined. Another less general sciences, historically occured later, and later reached the empirical stage, firstly passing throgh a theological and metaphysical phases. In the Comte's system, positive science was only a part of perfect social system, which he postulated. The ideal goal of society was to improve human nature. But his demands in this area proved to be unusual and different from his assumptions of objectivism: he called for an establishment of worship of Humanity, Progress and Order, which priests would have a monopolu on teaching and medicine, and would exercise censorship; there would be a dictatorial regime, and the authorities- hereditary. The motto of this order would be Comte's password: "L'amour pour principe; l'ordre pour base; le progrs pour but." ("Love as an principal, order as a base, progress as a goal"). There was also another french writer- Emile Durkheim. He had even greater impact on sociology than Comte. He thought that many ideas of his predecessor were too speculative. He conisdered sociology as a new science, which could answer traditional philosophical manner by examining then in an empirical way. He belived that studying social life with the same objectivity, as if it was a part of natural world (considered by different sciences) was essential. He claimed that social life could be analised as rigorously as objects or events in nature. He even showed it in his famous principle- "Study social facts as things!". His writings had a broad spectrum of topics, but mainly 3: sociology as an empirical science, the rise of individual and the formation of a new social orderm and the sources and character of moral authority in society. A key element of sociological research are social facts. The sociologist should threat them "like things", which meanse to reject all assumptions and prejudices about them, to stend "outside" of the examined phenomena. Social facts constitute a distinct class of phenomena, which can be explained only in a small extent by reference to another, apart from social means- classes of phenomena. Because in society, there occure apparitions qualitatively different from those that characterize the individual consciousness; can not threrefore be derived from them or reducted to them. He devided these social facts into 2 groups:

1) Material social facts: Society, Structural components of society such as church, institutions, etc., Morphological elements of society sych as population distribution, feeds, etc.; 2) Immaterial social facts: Morality, the collective Consciousness, the collective Imagination, social Currents; Accordin to Durkheim, an approaching the social facts sociologist should behave as if he came into an alien world, ie get rid of all prejudices. He should get into a state of mind, in wich physicists and chemists are, when they venture into the unexplored regions of their scientific acitivity. His methodological postulate was close to Descarte's metodical doubt- in other words an attempt to find a sociological COGITO- the point at wich you would actually start building the edifice of a knowledge. That point to Emil Durkheim was EMPIRIA. The ideas of Comte and Durkheim was totally different to ones of Karl Marx. Karl Marx was born in Prussia, he was a philosopher, an enonomist and a polictical activist. He was also looking for answer for questions (the same as Comte and Durkheim). Marx is regarded as the founder of the so-called "scietific socialism", which, was raised form his philosophical views, only with connection to them is understandable. Max remained constantly under the influcence of Hegel's philosophy, also retained his way of inquiry, his dialectical method and conviction of identity of "being" and "thinking". The peak end of the Marx's philosophical system is his materialistic conception of history, basen on historical materialism. In economic terms Karl Marx is a disciple of Ricardo, whose theories about the valuse of work were a base to his own system, and particulary the theorem of exploitation. Like Ricardo, Marx thought very pessimisticly about the situation of the workind class and predicted the collapse of the capistlist system, due to the constant growth of the workind class and increasingly exacerbating crisises (the theory of catastrophes). Because, according to dialecitcal method, the progress is made in such a way that in the place of the old system comes a new, quite the opposite, so Marx condemned all social reforms, aiming to complete the destruction of the capitalist system through revolution and the consolidation of power by the proletariat dictatorship. A lot into sociology put also a man called Max Weber, german sociologist, historian, economist, lawyer, theorist of politics and religious studier. He was a brother of another sociologistAlfred Weber. One of the main merits of Weber's methodology is the empowerment of the social sciences. Weber rejected the positivist conception of social science as science. Weber postulated to give the social sciences an exact and objective character by developing it's on specific methodologies for and the philosophy of science (eg the concept of ideal types), describing them with the most precise language (he introduced many, to this day, useful concepts), and conducting extensive historicalcomparative researches. He builds his sociological theory on the notion of action. The thing that distinguishes it from other human behavior is that, the working object associate a subjective sense with it. Operation of understanding (Verstehen) is only possible for rational action. Weber believed that a man, in most cases do not behave rationally. Therefore he called for the examination of human behavior by combining them with a fully rational and logicallycoherent ideal types. The researcher had to draw conclusions based on the differences between the ideal type, and a effect of action. With regard to the affective measures, based on emotional states, empathy is also helpful, and for traditional ones historical memory. The concept of rational action is the key to understanding the process of rationalization, characteristic to Western culture. Focusing on rationality is what distinguishes the Protestant ethic developed by deriving from Calvinism, Puritanism. In the work "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" he presented the view that the source of an economic advantage over the Catholic Protestant countries is ethic. Weber claimed that the development direction of Western society is moving away from tradition and extending the areas in which dominates thinking and rational acting. This process Weber described as decurising of the world - the destruction of

the world based on magic. Expression of those beliefs are, in particular the analysis of bureaucracy. His thesis about the superiority of Protestant Easter holidays on the Catholic Christmas is famous. The frist sociologist wanted to make sense of the changing societies, they lived in. Moreover , they wanted to explain the general functioning of societies and their changes. As we see, sociologists may only agree in an object of analysis, they often undertookt this analysis from different perespectives. But it's not like there are only perspecitves of Comte, Marx, Weber and Durkheim. Later, there appeared a system called "functionalism". Functionalism is one of the most important resaerch orientations in sociology. In researches, it was found by Bronisaw Malinowski and Alfred Radcliffe-Brown in 20's of XX century, extended later by Robert K. Metron, Talcotta Persons, Jeffrey Alexander and Niklas Luhmann. This teory is based on following assumtpions: 1) society is a system consisting of interrelated parts, each with a specific function in the system (hence the term "functionalism") 1) social system is in state of dynamic equilibrum 2) existing tenstions within the system may persist for a long time, but they are being solved 3) This system is changing, but in a gradual and evolutionary way, the biggest changes are within social macrostructures, while social and cultural microstructure remain essentially unchanged 4) characteristic of this system are: the existence of different roles and social positionsassociated with different rights and obligations, and the existence of common standardsand values. This system, to be able to run , must meet the following conditions: it must be able to adapt, achieve goals, integration and maintenance of patterns of action 5) social system strives to keep the peace, or the proper functioning, therefore creates a hierarchy. Talcott Parsons distinguished three phases of evolution of society: primary society,transitional and contemporary. The basis of the division were differences in the degree of adaptability and forms of social control, as well as the creation of new value systems, adapted to the increasingly complex relationship. Social control over the evolution of society and provides culture (writing, law). According to functionalists society creates a whole that must be considered as "functional unity". All systems within society are interlinked - a change to any of the elements can lead to disintegration. Nevertheless, each system has many subsystems that are specialized to perform specific functions. Functional Theory removes an individual entity from its view.Functional analysis and concepts associated with it also proved useful to be to the study of small groups or formal organizations. Among the sociology itself and its theoretical perspecitves there is a division for macrosociology and microsociology. Macrosociology is a analysis of a large-scale social systems, like political systems, nationalities, cultures, religions, local societies. It also includes the analisys of long-term processes of change like globalism, industrialism, social moves. If you study how everyday people's lifes are affected by institiutions or you compare 2 different cultures, you move in the area of marcosociology. Microsociology is about small social groups and cases, which are not able to be researched during normal macro-scale resaerches, like: socjometric relations, interpersonal conflicts, types of social intereactions or ways of playing social roles. The resarch field of microsociology is similar to the one of social pschology. In my opinion macrosociology is more sifnigiciant than microsociology, because it describes large groups of people, other cultures, religions, which I'm interested in and curious about. That's one of the reasons why I chose this topic. The other one, and probably the main one is that I'm keen on discovering why people behave in particular ways, what their lifes are infulenced by, other thinking systems. Sociology and psychology are the sciences which consists all of this things, and I wanted to organise my knowledge.