Every science has its object, which is the result of a theoretical abstraction, and that allows you to highlight certain patterns of development and operation of the facility.The specificity of sociology is that it studies society.So let's look at how to determine the subject of the founders of sociology.
Auguste Comte, who coined the word "sociology", believed that the subject of science is a holistic society, which is based on universal agreement.The latter is basically a unity of human history and human nature itself.Another founder of the science, English scientist Herbert Spencer, spent his whole life, seeing in front of bourgeois society, which is differentiated as they grow and maintain its integrity through the latest social institutions.According to Spencer, the subject of sociology - a society, serving as a social organism in which integrative processes combined with the differentiation due to the evolution of social institutions.
Karl Marx, who has lived most of his life in England, critical of the theory of Comte and Spencer.This was due to the fact that Marx believed that capitalist society is in deep crisis and it is replaced by a socialist.Soon he created his teaching, he has been identified as the materialist conception of history.According to him, the society develops not by ideas but by the material productive forces.Following this theory, the subject of sociology - society as an organic system, developing in the direction of unity and wholeness through the class struggle and revolution.
Thus, the founders of science agreed that the subject of her serves society as a reality.Direct role in the formation of different approaches have played a social-philosophy and values and political approaches.
second stage of formation of the science associated with the development of its unity with the methodology.Representative of this period appears early theoretical and methodological classic.At this time (the 80s of the 19th century - prior to the first world war) going development of the basic methodological principles of social research, awareness of approaches to the subject and ways to obtain empirical data on it.An important contribution in this direction made by the German sociologist F. Tennis.During his scientific career he analyzed social statistics, conducted empirical studies of the lower class of Hamburg investigated the state of crime and trends in the level of suicide.As a result of empirical sociology emerged as a descriptive discipline.
According tennis, formed the subject of sociology, socio, society and community, which are based on the interaction of people moved by the will.However, the content and sources will remain outstanding.In the same period Adler actively exploring the subject of sociology of culture, namely the social factors of formation of cultural values and fundamental norms.Later, however, this theory has been criticized.
The next step was the development of a mature theoretical and methodological classics.This period lasted from the First World War and 70 years of the 20th century.Scope and Methodology of Science are more closely related.Representative of this stage is the Russian-American sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, he created the "System of Sociology", which was based on the theory and methodology of measuring social mobility.According to him, the society - a real collection of interacting people, where the status of the subject depends on his actions in the fields of social mobility.This provision describes, first of all, the subject of sociology.
Currently (at the end of the 20th century, in the early 21st century, a new understanding of the science, the classic alternative. According to him, the center was not a society, but society as a subject of an active character. Among the supporters of the approach - and A. TouraineBourdieu, the British M. Archer and Anthony Giddens. Currently they are facing questions: Does rejected the classical understanding of the subject or simply in need of development.
