The term sociology was consisted Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès starting from the prefix " socio" Latin word socius meaning “Companion, Associated” and with the suffix " logie" Greek term old λόγος logos, meaning “Speech, Word” to indicate a Social science.

This discipline studies the Comportement S human S and regard those as comprehensible or explainable starting from the relations that the human ones maintain the ones with the others. The various sociological theories apprehend these relations in various ways, thus giving an account of the social phenomena under several angles: that of the inscription in a Company or a social Structure, that of the interactions between the individuals, that of the conflict between individuals or groups, that of the knowledge and processes of communication mobilized in the daily life, etc Certaines sociologies mix various approaches.

Sociology is a burst discipline, which makes coexist different Théorie S, various objects of studies, various professional practices.

Birth of sociology

If it is possible to date with a relative precision the invention from the word sociology, the production of the first course of sociology or the constitution of the first department of sociology, it is also always possible to recognize in former authors of the forms of reflection or sociological imagination. The development of sociology must consequently be seized starting from a specific historical context, the three revolutions, which caused a development of the sociological reflections and leads to the institutionalization of the discipline.

Precursors

The study of what we call the companies did not await the invention of the word sociology. The diversity of the uses and the organizations challenged the thinkers and the historians right from the start, in any case since they left us traces by the writing. Thus is it of Xénophon with its Économique , of Plato, Aristote with its Politique , its République , its Poétique , its Organon , etc of Zoroastre with its Avesta . Hérodote, in, was interested in the Egyptians.

For the Modern times , it is in the Novum organum , the Grande restoration of sciences of Francis Bacon, and in its table of classification of sciences, which one sees appearing, under the heading of social sciences , a whole of disciplines relating to the human society having the same epistemological statute as the natural science. At the 18th century, several authors start to reconsider the social worlds starting from mechanical or physical models of Newton: the positions and the relations between the individuals would obey laws similar to that of the gravitation. Montesquieu, in the same way, should not be forgotten, in particular for Of the spirit of the laws in which he proposes to apply analytical methods and comparative to the analysis of the political systems, in order to release the laws from them.

Will to constitute a “social physics”, i.e. a knowledge as objective as physical sciences, but which would relate to the field of the human organizations and the social relations, emerges at the beginning of the 19th century. The first to propose a theory " scientifique" social phenomena at the beginning of the 19th century is the count of Saint Simon (1760 - 1825. It gives him the name of social physiology , which it replaces in a general physiology which would include/understand also the study of the collective beings and their organization. The use of the word sociology is born from a small quarrel… When Auguste Count, which was the secretary of Saint-Simon of 1817 with 1823, wanted to take again the creation of a science of the company, it initially re-elected it “physical social”; But this term was already used by a Belgian, Quételet (which studied the social phenomena with statistics). It thus decided to create the word “sociology”. Auguste Count, developed sociological theories in the Système of positive policy (1851 - 1854). One often regards it in France as one of the founding fathers of this science.

One often counts among the precursors of sociology Alexis de Tocqueville (1805 - 1859), for his studies on the French revolution ( the old Mode and the Revolution ) or on the the United States ( Of the democracy in America ). It analyzes the companies here and compares the European american company and companies. He will be besides a visionary with regard to the concept of Moyennisation of the company. Sociology experienced an intense and regular development during the 20th century. Emile Durkheim, which took as a starting point certain theories of Auguste Count to renew this Social science, wanted in particular “to study the social facts like things”).

Three revolutions

If sociology emerges, at the 19th century, of the tests and attempts to seize the operation of the company, it is because major transformations obliges the men to reconsider the bonds which link them. According to the formula of Jean Duvignaud, the sociology perhaps presented like “the girl of the Revolution S”.

Political, economic and scientific transformations

First of all, the 19th century was one moment of great political instability through all Europe. Since 1789, the political modes, movements and ideologies multiplied. The insurrections and the wars between the European nations mark this century. The old social order, founded on the alliance of the king and the Church, was discredited, but the possibility that have the companies to be defined themselves led initially to a multiplication of the disorders and claims.

The Industrial revolution also takes part of this feeling of living in a new company. The artisanal gestures, that they are transmitted in the family or within organizations of trade-guild, are devalued by technological advance. Moreover, the rural migration destroys the traditional forms of organization of the social life. For the peasants become workmen, the degradation of the living conditions and the loss of the Community supports leads to an at the same time material and moral misery. With the political protest movements mix with the individual reactions which worry the time: flights, begging, wandering.

The traditional work the Community and company of Ferdinand Tönnies, initially published in 1887, constitutes a strong representation of the rupture which constituted the 19th century. He opposes the heat of the community, emotional world but field based on the family, with the superficiality of the company, aggregate of individuals having initially utility relations.

Sociology is born consequently not only from the will to describe the social life but also to bring answers to the social disturbances. “they all answer, more or less, with the same question: how to put an end to the obvious social crisis which Europe passes through? ”

The difference between sociology and the political discourses or arts persons will be consequently to try to bring a scientific answer to these questions. Science has indeed it even known its revolution; the 19th century is in particular marked by positivism. Biology, physics and chemistry know considerable progresses which transform the way in which the men perceive their material environment. Some of these disciplines take part in addition of the industrial revolution and find applications technical which strongly modify the lifestyles. Sociology will be carried by this positivism and many sociologists will borrow their models of analysis from biology or physics. The their application and advances in knowledge thus seem to prove that a scientifically founded speech can make it possible to intervene on the world and to answer the problems which the century poses.

For the majority of the sociologists, it is thus a question of producing a scientific representation of the social life able to answer the problems raised by the 19th century. It is thus a question of proposing a criticism of the modern social life and answers to the most extreme problems. The questionings of the sociologists are however very variable according to the countries.

Founding fathers of sociology vis-a-vis modernity

Durkheim makes a point of reconciling the assets of the revolutions, and initially individual autonomy, with a stable social order. In the foreword with its first work, division of social work, it affirms indeed: “As for the question which was at the origin of this work, it is that of the reports/ratios of the individual personality and the social solidarity. How is it made that, while becoming more autonomous, the individual depends more closely on the company? How can it be at the same time more personal and more interdependent? Because it is undeniable that two movements, if contradictory that they appear, continue in parallel”. If the companies can reconcile order and freedom, answers Durkheim, it is thanks to the “division of the labor”. This one must indeed make it possible to pass from a mechanical solidarity, founded on the similarity, with the development of an organic solidarity, i.e. resulting from the interdependence which exists between individuals with the different activities but needing from/to each other to live.

France is, when Durkheim founds French sociology, a country where the unit political and official is strong, but where remain of strong regional identities. The State must consequently produce a company of individual. As repeats it Durkheim, “the social fact is a moral fact”, the development of the company must produce individuals with the personality stronger “morals is than is the company… the first is strong only insofar as second is organized”.

In Germany, Weber will wonder when with him about the types of actions and the forms of the authority. The German culture having been unified before even as the political unit is not carried out, the reflections of Weber relate less to the conditions of existence of the company than on the dynamism of the social life. Weber wonders thus about the modes of actions and domination, producing the first criticism of the bureaucratic systems. Working on the development of capitalism, it shows the analogy which existed between Protestant ethics, in particular calvinist, and the spirit of capitalism. Wanting to check their election by God, the Protestants will invest themselves in work while rejecting the pleasure associated with consumption. They behave thus as capitalists who reinvest their profits. But it shows by there how the social life lost its direction and its voluntary character. Where the Protestants chose a lifestyle in agreement with their convictions nun, modernity produced a " cage of fer" a rational lifestyle of which it is not possible to escape: “For Weber, the central paradox of capitalism is that of the birth, in a religious context, of a type of new man (directed towards the research of rationality " instrumentale" or " formelle") whose universalization is likely to lead to a loss of direction of the social relations, while at the same time the expansion of the seizure " would continue; rationnelle" on nature and the social world. ”

At Marx for which the scientific study of the companies makes it possible to seize the ineluctability of the revolution and the advent of a communist company, at Pareto which seeks to seize the birth and the death of the elites or at Park which wants to include/understand how the city allows the progressive assimilation of the immigrants, incipient sociology thus seems initially a speech on the problems resulting from " the modernité". Sociology is then a way of answering the political and economic disturbances which pushed the men to question their representations of the social life. But sociology will be able to become a discipline only while continuing like a science and while reaching the university.

Foundation of the discipline

If French sociology retained in Durkheim his/her “founding father” it is partly because it was the first to approach sociology like a scientific discipline. That supposed on the one hand a work of clarification of its object in order to distinguish it from the competitor speeches on the company, and on the other hand to make recognize this discipline by constituting a research team, by creating reviews and finally, by making it recognize by the university.

To make sociology a science

Sociology was not with its birth the only speech on modernity. As well as the watch Wolf Lepenies, the literature, with the Romance and more still the realism, proposes representations of the social life indeed. Honore de Balzac thus seeks to build a complete description of the French company: before being famous " comedy humaine" its romantic cycle is entitled " studies sociales". The bond, sometimes conflict, between sociological speech and literary speech is however not specifically French. In England, H.G. Wells takes part in the first congresses of sociology, in Germany, works of Thomas Mann and max Weber is answered.

According to Wolf Lepenies, sociology consequently will constitute a third space between science and literature. She will seek to legitimate herself and to be different by her scientific approach from the social world, without however never being able to reach the degree of objectivity of sciences of the culture. Incipient sociology will fall under important epistemological debates to which it will bring very different answers to France and Germany.

If sociology must thus face the claims of the literature to say what is the social life, it must also face, within sciences, with incipient psychology. Durkheim will be thus évertuera to distinguish sociology from the Philosophie on the one hand, and of the Psychologie on the other hand, of which he will show his rival Gabriel Tarde. Its declared inspirers, in addition to Auguste Count, were Montesquieu and Rousseau, and the “division of the labor” the pivot of its work, where precisely the Durkheim philosopher meets the scientist.

Of Count with Durkheim, the Positivisme begins with a criticism of the political economy, just like the Marxisme, but on quite different postulates, primarily relating to the reality granted to the company like existence former to the person and ontologiquement founded.

Karl Marx is another thinker who will have a deep influence on the social and critical thought of the 19th century. It is primarily in Germany that it will become a major theoretical referent of sociology with the École of Frankfurt.

To include/understand the operation of the companies constitutes the hope of a means of fighting for the advent of a world righter (Karl Marx), scientifically to found a laic morals independent of the regulations of the religions (Emile Durkheim), to fight against the “plagues” of the company which are poverty, alcohol, immorality (Play), against the revolution sometimes (Gustave the Good).

Emile Durkheim is often regarded as the founding father of French sociology. The first, it posed the bases of a scientific methodology for sociology, in particular in the work the Rules of the sociological method (1895) in continuity Of the division of the social work (1893), delivers which is also its thesis. Its method rests primarily on the comparison of statistics and quantitative characteristics, seeking to release themselves from the subjectivism related to very given qualitative and to remove from all a priori moral or moralizer the effort to include/understand a “social fact” as in its work entitled the Suicide .

The contemporary of Durkheim, max Weber, but according to different ways, employs political science, the political economy, the philosophy of the culture and the right, the study of the religions, which are according to him, just like sociology, of “sciences of the culture”. According to a whole tradition of German philosophy (Wilhelm Dilthey in particular), these sciences are too far away from sciences of nature so that they can take as a starting point their methods. She proposes a comprehension of the collective phenomena rather than the search for laws (it is the method known as understanding). For Weber, the goal of sociology is of:

(…) to include/understand by interpretation the social activity and causalement explaining there its unfolding and its effect. We understand by " activité" a human behavior (…) when and in so far as the agent or the agents communicates a subjective direction to him. And by " activity; sociale" , the activity which, according to its direction aimed by the agent or the agents refers to the behavior of others, by report/ratio to which, its unfolding is directed. | Economy and company , Plon, 1971, p. 4.