August Comte 1798 –1857

1. August Comte1798 –1857 Positivism: the methods of the natural sciences could be productively used to study the social world optimistic belief in humans' ability to figure things out and improve their circumstances

2. Positivism • No king, priest, or philosopher could simply declare what social arrangements were best; those should be determined by means of empirical study and systematic analysis. • Society was progressing in a manner that wasn't random. Social change, for better and for worse, made some kind of sense, and it had some kind of order or meaning to it. • Although some amount of inequality might be unavoidable, inequality on the basis of social class, place of birth, or parentage was not only immoral but also inefficient.

3. Karl Marx1818 – 1883 his general theory of history ideas about power and exploitation

4. Marx on history dialectical materialism most important forces in history were basically economic forces every stage in history distinguished by its own mode of production, a way of organizing the production and distribution of material goods each mode of production has inherent conflicts among different classes conflicts inevitably lead to the failure of one mode of production and the beginning of another historical change about class conflict over concrete things

5. Marx on capitalism bourgeois: the wealthy, powerful people who own the factories, the farmland, and just about everything else proletariat: the people who don't own much and are forced to work for the bourgeois to feed their families no matter how much profit a factory owner makes in a day, if his workers don't have anywhere else to work, all the owner needs to do is pay the workers enough to keep them alive a system that trades real things (work, food, shelter) for an imaginary thing: money value of my labor isn't measured by what good I do for myself or my society; it's measured by how much (or how little) money I make

6. Émile Durkheim1858-1917 humans are fundamentally social

7. Durkheim’s View of Society humans are fundamentally social The Rules of Sociological Method (1895) social facts: facts that are true of groups of people rather than individuals humans becoming more differentiated shared social values help us work together productively & peacefully

8. Sociology to die for Suicide (1897) suicides seem to have shared social causes suicide rate is a social fact that ought to be explained by other social facts pioneering use of social statistics egoistic suicides were more frequent in groups with weak social ties altruistic suicides were more frequent in groups with extremely strong social ties defining and explaining social facts about groups

9. Max Weber1864 – 1920 social life is marked by both conflict and cohesion

10. “Iron Cage" developing technology and growing population had inevitably led to functional differentiation modern society is marked by rationalization modern society as an “iron cage," where for better and for worse we're locked into well-defined roles development of a set of religious values that promoted hard work and savings had worked

11. Protestant work ethic The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-05) values of hard work, discipline, and savings connection between a rigorous religious worldview and the capitalist economic system may be dehumanizing to work in exchange for money rather than to work growing food for your family, but now you have money that you can spend on whatever you want