The subject of sociology and its historical formation

Any science has its own subject, which is the result of theoretical abstraction, and which makes it possible to distinguish certain regularities in the development and functioning of an object. The specificity of sociology is that it studies society. So let's see how the founders of sociology defined it.

Auguste Comte, who came up with the very word "sociology", believed that the subject of science Is a holistic society, based on universal consent. The latter is fundamentally based on the unity of human history and directly on the nature of man. Another founder of science, the English scientist Herbert Spencer, spent his whole life seeing the bourgeois society before him, which differentiated as he grew and maintained integrity thanks to the newest social institutions. According to Spencer, the subject of sociology is a society that acts as a social organism in which integrative processes are combined with differentiation through the evolution of social institutions.

Karl Marx, who lived most of his life in England, critically treated the theory of Comte and Spencer. This was due to the fact that Marx believed that bourgeois society was in deep crisis and that it was being replaced by a socialist one. Soon he created his teaching, which was defined as a materialistic understanding of history. According to him, society develops not at the expense of ideas, but at the expense of the material productive forces. Following this theory, the subject of sociology is society as an organic system, developing in the direction of unity and integrity through the struggle of classes and revolution.

Thus, the founders of science agreed that society is the object of it as a single reality. A direct role in the formation of different approaches was played by socio-philosophical and value-political approaches.

The second stage in the development of this science is connected with its development in unity with methodology. The representative of this period is the early theoretical and methodological classics. At this time (80th years of the 19th century - before the World War I), the development of the basic methodological principles of social research, the realization of approaches to the object and ways to obtain empirical information about it. An important contribution to this direction was made by the German sociologist F. Tennis. In the course of his scientific work, he analyzed social statistics, carried out empirical studies of the lower estate of Hamburg, investigated the state of crime and the level of suicide tendencies. As a result of the work empirical sociology appeared as a descriptive discipline.

According to Tennis, the subject of sociology is formed by the types of sociality, society and community, which are based on people's will-driven interactions. However, the content and sources of will remained unclarified. In the same period, Adler is actively studying the subject of sociology of culture, namely the social factors of the formation of cultural values and basic norms. However, later this theory was criticized.

The next stage was the development of a mature theoretical and methodological classics. This period lasted from the First World War to the 70s of the 20th century. The subject and methodology of science become more closely connected. The 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, society is a real set of interacting people, where the status of the subject depends on his actions in the sectors of social mobility. This provision describes, above all, the subject of sociology.

At the present time (at the end of the 20th century, at the beginning of the 21st century, a new understanding of this science arose, alternative to the classical one.) According to him, not the society but the subject of the society as an active actor was in the center. Bourdieu, the British M.Archer and E. Giddens.They are currently facing the questions: is the classical understanding of the subject rejected or simply in need of development.