Sociology of culture

Two central dimensions of knowledge: ontology and epistemology

Ontology: the real world

Epistemology: with what methodology it’s possible to study what is real

Political, social and intellectual forces in the rise of sociology

• Political Revolution (French Revolution 1789-1799: society, education, religion, culture is subject to deep changes; end of the alliance between throne and altar)
• Industrial Revolution (emergence of capitalism; urbanization; religious change; colonialism; growth of science)
• Intellectual Revolution (Enlightenment: reason and empirical research)

The Enlightenment is characterized by the belief that people can comprehend and control the universe by means of reason and empirical research. By emphasizing the acquisition of knowledge through scientific empirical reasoning as the canon of truth, as the only valid explanatory logic in a modern society, the Enlightenment opens a unique place for what will come to be defined as sociology. Sociology is envisioned as a discipline that provides a reasoned, scientific analysis of social life, and which, by doing so, illuminates the impact of social forces on societal processes, thus displacing the pre-Enlightenment view of society ordered by divine hand. The view is that because the physical world is dominated by natural laws, it is likely that the social world is too.

Auguste Comte 1798-1857

Comte’s version of positivism: as a science committed to the search of invariant laws that can be derived from doing research on the social world and/or from theorizing about that world. Comte coins the phrase “social physics” and defines sociology as a positivist science. Most contemporary sociologists continue to see sociology as a positivistic science.

Today, in modern use, “social physics” refers to using “big data” analysis and the mathematical laws to understand the behaviour of human crowds. For example, Alex Pentland, director of the Human Dynamics Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is considered one of the most powerful data scientists in the world and is author of Social Physics, Penguin, New York, 2014. According to Pentland, social physics is about the way human social networks spread ideas and transform those ideas into behaviours. Pentland, along with fellow data scientists, computer engineers, and physicists, is a pioneering member of a movement that aims to use the millions of digital information people leave via smartphones, GPS devices, and the Internet, to create a data-driven mathematical model of social behaviour.

Law of the three stages

Three basic stages passed by the human mind and the history of the world in the search of explanation of the things around them.

1. The Theological Stage (prior to 1300). The human mind searches for the essential nature of things, their origin. This stage is divided in:
   • Fetishism: worship of an object
   • Polytheistic: many gods
   • Monotheistic stage: one God that explains everything
2. The Metaphysical Stage (1300-1800). Transitional stage. Abstract forces replace supernatural.
3. The Positivist Stage (1800-). People give up their search for original causes or purposes. We can know the phenomena but not their ultimate causes.

In Comte’s view, society invariably follows a law of progressive development. Because invariant laws are controlling this process of change, there is relatively little that people can do to affect the overall direction of the process. This view of a constantly evolving progress is very much part of how Enlightenment thinkers think about humanity. It is also present (in different ways) in how Marx and Durkheim think about society and its forms of social organization. There is thus a presumption in intellectual and scientific thought (across all disciplines) that progress invariably occurs along with the march of time.

Sociology

Three basic methods of doing social research

1. Observation: should be directed by theory, without it we wouldn’t know what to look for in the social world.
2. Experiment: e.g., natural experiment in which the consequences of something that happens in one setting are observed and compared to the conditions in settings in which the event didn’t occur.
3. Comparison
   • Humans and lower animal societies.
   • Societies in different parts of the world.
   • Different stages of societies over time.

As physics can be divided in statics (branch of physical science that is concerned with the forces that act on bodies at rest under equilibrium conditions) and dynamics (branch of physical science that is concerned with the motion of material objects in relation to the physical factors that affect them such as force, mass, momentum, energy), similarly sociology, according to Comte, can be divided in social statics (branch of sociology that studies society in its equilibrium and order) and social dynamics (branch of sociology that studies society in its processes and changes).

Emile Durkheim 1858-1917

Two main ideas: priority of the social over the individual, and that society can be studied scientifically. Durkheim stresses the social dimension of all human phenomena.

1. The science of sociology treats “social facts” as “things”

Society is a part of nature, and a science of society must be based upon the same logical principles as those which obtain in natural science. Society is made up of social facts:

• Can be empirically studied like «things»
• Social structures, norms and values that are external to the individual
• Are coercive of the individual
• Are explained by other social facts

Example: language. A) It is a thing that must be studied, one cannot philosophize about the logical rules of language. B) It is external to the individual, individuals use a language, but it is not defined or created by them. C) It is coercive of the individual: the language that we use makes some things extremely difficult to say. D) Changes in language can be explained only by other social facts and never by one individual’s intentions. Social fact is experienced as an external constraint rather than an internal drive. It is general throughout the society and is not attached to any individual. Reducing social facts to individuals would be like reducing sociology to psychology.

Material and non-material social facts

1. Material social facts: for example, population size and density. They are directly observable.
2. Non-material social facts: culture.

Durkheim recognizes that non-material social facts are, to a certain extent, foun