Unit-III SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT

There are two main schools of thought on the basis of scope of sociology. They are: 1) The Specialist or Formalistic school. 2) The Synthetic school. The specialist or Formalistic school The main advocates of this school are George Simmel, Max weber, Small, Von wiese and Tonnies. They regard sociology as a pure and independent science having a limited scope. According to them sociology cannot be regarded as the study of social life as a whole, because that would be too vast a scope for a social science to deal with properly. Formal school argued in favor of giving sociology a definite subject matter to make it a distinct discipline. It emphasized upon the study of forms of social relationships and regarded sociology as independent. Let us examine their views in brief. Max Weber(1864-1920): Max Weber also pleads for a definite field for sociology. For him, sociology as al science should attempt the interpretative understanding of social action. The main aim of sociology is thus interpretation and understating of social behavior and social action. But he points out that all human activities are not necessarily social. He further opines that sociology should make an analysis and classification of types of social action. George Simmel(1858-1918):

According to Simmel, Sociology being a pure and independent science has it limited scope? The difference between sociology and other social sciences is that it deals with in the struggle for existence, the rules and regulations which define their relations to each other etc. comes under its scope. It also deals with the system of knowledge, belief art, morals and any other capacities and habits acquired and developed in the course of their activities as members of society. But this is too wide a scope for any science to deal with properly. An attempt has been made to limit and demarcate the field of sociology. Ferdinand Tonnies (: Ferdinand Tonnies is a strong supporter of the formalists school of thought. He has differentiated between society and community as the basis of forms of relationships. He Termed. 1) Gemeinschaft (community) and 2) Gesselschaft (society). Tonnies work centers around these two concepts developed his him and has made a clear distinction between these two types of relationships. The task of sociology is to study the different forms of social relationship that comes under these two categories. Criticism: Basically the view of all these scholars belonging to formalistic school is that scope of sociology is limited. It covers only the forms of social relationships in their abstract nature and not in any concrete situation. They have been very widely criticised for this kind of viewpoint with regard to the scope of sociology. Firstly, formalistic school has narrowed the scope of sociology to the study of abstract! Forms. Sociology should also concern itself with the study of the concrete contents of social! Relationships. Secondly, the distinction between the forms of social relations and their contents not workable. Ginsberg criticised Simmel's theory that the

function of sociology is to study the social relationship in abstraction is not correct. Study of competition, for example, will be hardly of any use unless it is studied in concrete form in economic life or in the world of art and knowledge. The scope of sociology should not be limited to the study of social relations in general. Its scope should be widened by studying these relationships in different spheres. They are sociology of law, sociology of religion, of art and sociology of knowledge. Thirdly, sociology is not the only science that studies the forms of social relationships. Other sciences such as the study of international law, for example, includes social relations like war, agreement, contract etc. Political science. Economics also study social relationships. Finally, the establishment of pure sociology is impractical. As a matter of fact, no social science can be studied in isolation from other social sciences. In fact, more fruitful and correct understanding of a social phenomenon is possible with an interdisciplinary approach. Thus, we can say that the formalistic school has narrowed down the field of sociology Synthetic School The synthetic school of thought conceives sociology as a synthesis of the social sciences. It covers the entire gamete of sociology. It widens the scope of sociology and wants to make it a general social science. In fact this school is responsible for making sociology Encyclopedia in character. The chief exponents of this school of thought are Morris Ginsberg, Emile Durkheim, L.T.Hob house, P.A.Sorokin, Karl Mannheim. The main feature of this school is that all parts of social life are intimately interrelated. Only one aspect of the study is not sufficient to understand the entire social phenomenon. Sociology should attempt to study social life as a whole. Morris Ginsberg:According to Morris Ginsberg, sociology not only studies the relationship between individuals in a society, it also studies the relationship between different aspects of social life, such as economic, political, moral, religious legal and so on. It also studies the factors of stability and charge in a

society. Ginsberg divides the scope of sociology into four main branches. They are social Morphology, Social control, social process and social pathology. Social Morphology:Social Morphology deals with the quantity and quality of population. It studies the social structure, social groups and social institutions. Social Control: Social control studies the mechanism through which society guides and controls the behavior of its members. It deals with formal as well as informal means. Of social control such as customs, traditions, morals, religion and formal means like law, court, police etc. Social Process: Social process tries to study different modes of interactions like cooperation, competition, accommodation, conflict assimilation, integration etc. Social Pathology: Social pathology studies social problems like poverty, beggary, unemployment, overpopulation, crime etc. It also deals with social maladjustment, social disorder and disturbances. Emile Durkheim: Emile Durkheim has divided fundamental branches. the scope of sociology into three

They are: (i) Social Morphology (ii) Social Physiology (iii) General Sociology. i) Social Morphology:

Social Morphology studies the geographical or territorial basis of life of the people and the demographic aspects of society like size, density and quality of population. ii) Social Physiology: Social physiology has a number of branches like sociology of family, sociology of religion, sociology of community and sociology of law etc. These are called special "sociologies". iii) General Sociology: General sociology is the philosophical part of sociology. It deals with the general character of the social facts. It tries to formulate general social laws. P. A. Sorokin: According to Sorokin the scape of sociology includes: 1) The study of relationships between different aspects of social phenomena. ii) The study of relationship between social and non-social. iii) The study of general features of social phenomena.