What was the historical context in which sociological thinking developed, and why were many early social thinkers concerned with social order and stability?
What was the historical context in which sociological thinking developed, and why were many early social thinkers concerned with social order and stability?
Sociology as a discipline emerged right after the Industrial Revolution. The earliest schools of thought that sociology had were the functional and the conflict schools. The Classical Sociologists could be divided into two groups: the functional theorists and the conflict theorists.
Since sociology emerged during a social upheaval and changed, the old theorists were mainly concerned with social change and its effects.
The functional theorists dealt with how all the parts of society should play their respective roles efficiently for the bigger society to run smoothly. They believed in concepts like 'organismic analogy' in which the society was compared to an organism, and the different parts of the society were compared to its biological organs. For the organism to survive, all the organs were to function correctly. They believed in social solidarity and tried to analyze how the nature of solidarity was different in industrial societies than in feudal societies. The functional theorists believed in instability and the maintenance of the status quo.
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