Introduction

Abstract

This book is neither a history of sociology nor of sociological theory but a selective history of sociological thought from its origins in eighteenth-century philosophy, history and political economy. By sociological thought is meant an awareness of society as a distinctive object of study, as a system or structure objectively determined by laws and processes. Eighteenth-century social thought was sociological in this sense although it failed to develop an adequate sociological concept of the social, too often assimilating it to political and economic elements. In effect eighteenth-century social thought posed many of the critical issues of sociology without resolving them sociologically. In contrast, early nineteenth-century sociological thought (specifically Comte, Spencer, Marx) sought to define the social both in terms of society as a complex structural whole and in its relation with specific institutions, notably the division of labour, social classes, religion, family and scientific/professional associations. Society was industrial society and the broad themes of the early sociologists were those of social conflict, alienation, community, social cohesion and the possibilities of evolution and development.