1. Sociology in India has grown through an encounter with the Western philosophical and scientific traditions.
2. Sociology in our country has also been deeply influenced by the numerous internal processes, which signify the passage of India, from a colony of the British to the status of an independent Democratic Republic.
3. As in Europe, the pioneers (or founder fathers) of Indian Sociology were also practitioners of other academic specialities.
4. The teaching of sociology started in the Department of Political Economy and Political Philosophy of the Calcutta University in 1908 when two papers in that subject were offered.
5. A full - fledged department of sociology was established in Calcutta University only in 1976. During the beginning years sociology courses were taught in the departments of economics, political science, human geography and anthropology in Calcutta University.
6. The pioneers of sociology in Calcutta (Now Kolkata) were philosopher - cum - administrator. Brajendra Nath Seal (1864-1938) economic historian Benoy Kumar Sarkar (1885-1949) anthropologist K.P Chattopadhyay (1893-1963) and human geographer Nirmal Kumar Bose (1901-1972).
7. The first department of sociology and civics was, however, established in the Bombay (now Mumbai) University, as part of the Bombay school of Economics in 1919, although a course in sociology was introduced in 1914 for the post graduate students of economics.
8. The separate department began functioning from 1919 in Bombay University which was headed by a New Zealander Patrick Geddes. He was a town planner and human geographer. He was later joined by G.S. Ghurye who started as an Indologist but later worked for his Ph. D. in Social Anthropology at Cambridg University.
9. However, some new information regarding growth of Sociology in India has also come to light. It is said that before Patric Geddes there was a freedom fighter named Shyamji Krishna Verma, who was a political revolutioary. As a freedom fighter he had a great interest in understanding and analysing Indian society, but was soon forced by the British authority to leave India.
10. During his exile in Europe, Shyamji Krishna Verma happened to meet Auguste Comte, the founder of sociology. Later he also had a chance to meet Herbert Spencer another founder of sociology in Europe. In consultation with Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, Shyamji Krishna Verma brought out a Journal, but it did not continue for long.
11. When in 1922, Professor Radha Kamal Mukherjee moved from Calcutta to Lucknow University to teach Economics, he introduced Sociology as one of the courses. He even hired Dr. D.N. Majumdar, a trained anthropologist, as lecturer in Primitive Economics. In this way, the Department of Economics in Lucknow University intorduced teachnig of both Sociology and social anthropology, and some important work also done by D. P. Mukherjee and A.K. Saran in this department.
12. As time passed Lucknow University created separate departments of Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work. It is from these three centres - Culcutta, Bombay and Lucknow - that the first generation of sociologists were produced who then contributed both through teaching and research to the growth of Indian Sociology.
13. The most eminent names in the field of Sociology are those of M.N. Srinivas, K.M. Kapadia, Irawati Karve, D.N. Majumdar, S.C. Dube, A.R. Desai, etc.
(i) Society is common between sociology and history.
(ii) Both are social science disciplines.
(iii) Sociology and history both are concerned with human activities and events.
(iv) History is concerned primarily with the record of the past. The historians want to describe, as accurately as possible, what actually happened to man during a given time. The socialogists use, to all intents and purposes the same record to the past.
(v) Apart from philosophy today the historian is considerbly depending upon sociological concepts and narrations. We conway that modern historiography and modern sociology have been influenced by each other.
Differences between Sociology and History :
(i) Sociology is concerned with the present and in some extent with future, History studies the past.
(ii) Sociologist borrow from historical sources and sociological analysis and vice-versa. The Sociologists use, to all intants and purposes, the same record of the past.
(iii) Generally, we may say that history occupies it self with the differences in similar events and sociology deals with teh similarities in different events.
(iv) Historians generally restrict themselves to the study of the past, from the more recent to the remotest one. Sociologist shows interest in the contemporary scence or the recent past.
(v) In short we may say that, sociology and history may be distinguished. The former generalized about society, the latter is a particularizing or individualzing discipline. Sociology in an analytical discipline whereas history is a descriptive discipline.
(vi) Sociology emphasizers on the regular and the recurrent whereas history investigates the unique and the individual.
(vii) An event that has occurred only once in the human past is of no sociological importance unless it can be related to a pattern of events that repeats itself generation after generation, historical period after historical period and human group after human group. If the past is concerned of as a continuous cloth unrolling through the centuries, history is interested in the individual threads and strands that made it up : sociology analysis the patterns that human society exhibits.
(ii) Most notable among these thinkers have been (a) Auguste comte (1798-1857) (b) Herbert
Spencer (1820-1903) (c) Karl Marx (1818-1883), Emil Durkheim (1858-1917) and (v) Max Weber (1864-1920). All these pioneers came from other disciplines.
(iii) (a) Auguste comte was a philosopher (b) Herbert spencer had a background in natural history and he was influenced by Charles Darwin's theory o evolution (c) Emile Durkheim was a rabbi (Jewish Priest) (d) Max Weber was trained in legal and economic history (e) Karl Marx had dual interest in abstract philosophy and in concrete reality of his times. However, it is a fact that Karl Marx did not pursue an academic career and never claimed to be a sociologist. It is true that influence of Karl Marx spread to various branches of knowledge and so many people became followers of his ideology, which became popular as Marxism or scientific socialism in history.
Sociology is a scientific discipline. It is a science in the sense that it invalues objectives and systematic methods of investigation and evalution of social reality in the light of empirical evidence and interpretation.
Sociology cannot be directly modelled on the patterns of natural sciences, because human behaviour is different from the world of nature.
Scope of Sociology:
(i) Sociology is a systematic and objective study of social life, which is created by a variety of interactions between individuals and groups. When similar behaviour is repeated in a given situation it becomes a norm or an institution.
(ii) People in different statues and performing different roles, interact with other people formally or informally. All these repetitive actons are part of the culture of a given group and define the social organisation. Sociologists study individual's actions in different social relationships such as between husband and wife, teacher and student, buyer and seller, they also study different social processes such as child rearing. Co-operation, competition, conflict, and migration etc. and they study different organisation and groups. For examples family, caste, associations and state, etc.
(iii) Sociologist, therefore, in the study of social life as a whole. It has a wide range of concerns and interests. It seeks to provide classifications and forms of social relationships, institutions and associations realating to social, economic, moral, religions and political aspects of human life.
(iv) Following are four main aspects of society that are the core subject matter of sociology :
(a) Culture : Culture is the totality of learned and socially transmitted behaviour from one generation to the next. It includes symbols, signs and language, besides religion, rituals, beliefs and artefacts.
(b) Social Organisation : The term 'social organisation' refers to interdependence of different aspects of society. This is an essential characteristic of all enduring social entities, such as groups, communities, and collectivities. Currently, social organisation is used to refer to the interdependence of parts of in-groups of all sizes, form a clique of workers in hospitals, and factories to large scale societies and organisations.
(c) Social Institutions : A social institution is a procedure, practice and an instrument, hence an ensemble of a variety of customs and habits accumulated over a period of time.
In every society, people form social institutions to meet their basic needs of survival.
Institutions are tools and instruments of human transactions. These are stable clusters of roles, values and norms.
(d) Social Structure : It is a pattern of inter-relations between individuals. Every society has a social structure, a complex of main groups, institutions and arrangements. Relating to status and power.
It is said by some scholars that the study of social structure is comparable to the study of human anatomy and that of social organisation to that of physiology. But that is only a partial and not a complete analogy.
(i) First of Auguste Comte (1798-1857) gave the discipline its name, calling it sociology or the science of human association.
(ii) Hobhouse explained how sociology studied the interaction of human minds.
(iii) Park and Burgess said sociology is the science of collective behaviour.
(iv) Emile Durkheim said that sociology is the study of collective representation. All our thinking, feeling and doing constitute social facts. Social fact, according to Emile Durkheim, is exterior to human mind and it put constraints or human behaviour. He says that all that which is a social fact constitutes the suggest matter of the study of sociology.
(v) Max weber : He has defined sociology differently. He said that human activities are oriented towards some action, which fulfils some objectives. Individuals in the society engage in actions for realization of given goals/interests.
Actions, according to Max Weber, constitute the subject matter of sociology. Since every social action is directed at some other person, sociology studies the interaction systems, which shape social institutions, like polity, the hospital and bureaucracy.
II. Scientific Nature of Sociology:
(i) Sociology is a scientific discipline. It is a science in the sense that involves objective and systematic methods of investigation and evaluation of social reality in the light of empirical evidence and interpretation.
(ii) However, it is also a fact that sociology cannot be directly modelled on the patterns of natural sciences, because human behaviour is different from the world of nature.
(iii) Among other differences the subject matter of natural science is relatively static and unchanging whereas human behaviour, the subject matter of sociology, is flexible and dynamic.
(iv) The founder fathers of sociology were concerned with the study of social order and change. They also desired to model the science of society or sociology as exact a discipline as natural sciences.
(v) No doubt sociology is a science because it fulfils the basic requirements of objective and rational knowledge of social reality.
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