TERMS, CONCEPTS AND THEIR USE IN SOCIOLOGY has a biography or history. We saw how certain material and intellectual developments shaped the sociological perspective as well as its concerns. Likewise sociological concepts too have a story to tell. Many of the concepts reflect the concern of social thinkers to understand and map the social changes that the shift from pre-modern to modern entailed.
For instance sociologists observed that simple, small scale and traditional societies were more marked by close, often face-to- face interaction. And modern, large scale societies by formal interaction. They therefore distinguished primary from secondary groups, community from society or association. Other concepts like stratification reflect the concern that sociologists had in understanding the structured inequalities between groups in society.
Concepts arise in society. However just as there are different kinds of individuals and groups in society so there are different kinds of concepts and ideas. And sociology itself is marked by different ways of understanding society and looking at dramatic social changes that the modern period brought about. We have seen how even in the early stage of sociology’s emergence there were contrary and contesting understandings of society.
If for Karl Marx class and conflict were key concepts to understand society, social solidarity and collective conscience were key terms for Emile Durkheim. In the Post-World War II period sociology was greatly influenced by the structural functionalists who found society essentially harmonious. They found it useful to compare society to an organism where different parts have a function to play for the maintenance of the whole. Others, in particular the conflict theorists influenced by Marxism saw society as essentially conflict ridden.
Within sociology some tried to understand human behaviour by starting with the individual, i.e. micro interaction. Others began with macro structures such as class, caste, market, state or even community. Concepts such as status and role begin with the individual.
Concepts such as social control or stratification begin from a larger context within which individuals are already placed. The important point is that these classifications and types that we discuss in sociology help us and are the tools through which we can understand reality. They are keys to open locks to understand society. They are entry points in our understanding, not the final answer.
But what if the key becomes rusted or bent or does not fit the lock, or fits in with effort? In such situations we need to change or modify the key. In sociology we both use and also constantly interrogate or question the concepts and categories. Very often there is considerable unease about the coexistence of different kinds of definitions or concepts or even just different views about the same social entity.
For example conflict theory versus the functionalist theory. This multiplicity of approaches is particularly acute in sociology. And it -