Introducing Society 1 · Section 19

political science. Sociologists like Max Weber worked in what can be termed as political sociology. The focus of political sociology has been increasingly on the actual study of political behaviour. Even in the recent Indian elections one has seen the extensive study of political patterns of voting.

Studies have also been conducted in membership of political organisations, process of decision- making in organisations, sociological reasons for support of political parties, the role of gender in politics, etc. Sociology and History Historians almost as a rule study the past, sociologists are more interested in the contemporary or recent past. Historians earlier were content to delineate the actual events, to establish how things actually happened, while in sociology the focus was to seek to establish causal relationships. History studies concrete details while the sociologist is more likely to abstract from concrete reality, categorise and generalise.

Historians today are equally involved in doing sociological methods and concepts in their analysis. Conventional history has been about the history of kings and war. The history of less glamorous or exciting events as changes in land relations or gender relations within the family have traditionally been less studied by historians but formed the core area of the sociologist’s interest. Today, however history is far more sociological and social history is the stuff of history.

It looks at social patterns, gender relations, mores, customs and important institutions other than the acts of rulers, wars and monarchy. Sociology and Psychology Psychology is often defined as the science of behaviour. It involves itself primarily with the individual. It is interested in her/his intelligence and learning, motivations and memory, nervous system and reaction time, hopes and fears.

Social psychology, which serves as a bridge between psychology and sociology, maintains a primary interest in the individual but concerns itself with the way in which the individual behaves in social groups, collectively with other individuals. Sociology attempts to understand behaviour as it is organised in society, that is the way in which personality is shaped by different aspects of society. For instance, economic and political system, their family and kinship structure, their culture, norms and values. It is interesting to recall that Durkheim who sought to establish a clear scope and method for sociology in his well-known study of suicide left out individual intentions of those who commit or try to commit suicide in favour of statistics concerning various Activity Find out how historians have written about the history of art, of cricket, of clothes and fashion, of architecture and housing styles.