COMARISON OF SOCIOLOGY WITH HISTORY [SHORT NOTES/KEY POINTS TO REMEMBER]

UPSC Sociology Mains Syllabus

Paper 1 – Chapter 1 – Sociology – The Discipline

Scope of the subject and comparison with other social sciences.

• Sociology is the study of social life, social change, and the social causes and consequences of human behavior.
• History, the discipline that studies the chronological record of events (as affecting a nation or people), based on a critical examination of source materials and usually presenting an explanation of their causes.
• Historical Sociology is a branch of Sociology focusing on how societies develop through history. It looks at how social structures people regard as natural are in fact shaped by complex social processes. The structure in turn shapes institutions and organizations, which affect the society – resulting in phenomena ranging from gender bias and income inequality to war.

• G E Howard save that History is past Sociology, Sociology is present History.
• Radcliffe brown said that Sociology is nomothetic while Hstory is ideographic.
• Karl Marx and Durkheim pioneered the use of historical data in their sociological discourse.
• Marx’s historical materialism is centered around historical evolution of modes of production.
• Weber’s Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism also uses a historical particular ideal type.
• Pitirim Sorkin’s Social and Cultural Dynamics makes use of historical inferences.

• Historians almost as a rule study the past.
• Sociologists are more interested in the contemporary or recent past and present.
• Historians try to establish how things actually happened.
• Sociology establishes casual relationships.
• History studies concrete details.
• Sociology generalizes particular events.
• History is descriptive.
• Sociology has normative elements too.
• History looks at events from the framework of time.
• Sociology looks at events and institutions from the perspective of nature of relations involved.

• The interaction between two disciplines can be found in their subject matter.
• They both have overlapping subject methods.
• With help of History, Sociology can get crucial information about the past.
• Now, History is not only concerned with which and what events but also how of events.
• The emphasis on cause-and-effect has brought the two disciplines closer.
• History is no longer purely descriptive.