The computer boy was right in his observation that much has been written on society by all sorts of people: sages and thinkers, social law givers, social reformers and political leaders, litterateurs, wanderers and travellers from distant lands. No doubt all such abundant literature is relevant to our understanding of society, but it cannot be classified as sociology.
Sociology is the science of things social. The first syllable—socio—suggests that it deals with the social or with society. The second syllable—logy—is derived from the Latin root logos, meaning a systematic arrangement or a science. In Hindi and in Sanskrit, it gets translated into Shastra, which means an authoritative treatment, as distinct from vigyan, meaning science. In Hindi, Samaj Shastra is used for Sociology, and Samaj (or Samajik) Vigyan for Social Sciences. One can say that events occurring within society are social, or that ‘social’ is a broad field that encompasses society as well. In the latter sense, the word social also includes the relationship between societies.
This discipline is much younger than the other social sciences. Those regarded as its ‘founding fathers’ were born in Europe between 1798 (Auguste Comte) and 1885 (Ferdinand Tönnies). They came from different academic backgrounds. Both Sociology and Social Anthropology are products of nineteenth-century Europe.
The Industrial Revolution that occurred in Europe in the eighteenth century expanded awareness amongst Europeans about their own past, leading to discoveries of Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Near Eastern antiquities. It facilitated the colonization of non-European populations in Asia and Africa, exposing the Europeans to a wide variety of human cultures with their exotic, primitive, and somewhat unique customs and practices, all of which challenged existing conceptions about human civilization.
Similarly, industrialization and urbanization in Europe, consequences of the Industrial Revolution, caused a disruption in existing traditional social structures. The changing social relationships in Europe attracted the attention of social thinkers and philosophers towards reforms and reorganization.
Both these concerns were ideologically charged, but they also impacted research. Increasing awareness about the past and discoveries of primitive societies in far-off lands opened out avenues for those interested in the biological history of humanity and in the historical relationship among different societies. Those interested in the primitive, or less advanced, cultures were eager to establish their superiority through comparison, and those interested in the improvement of their own societies began developing ideologies to which were attached political agendas. Those who went to study ‘other’ societies and cultures were called ethnographers and ethnologists1 (later social anthropologists), and those who studied and wrote about their own societies within the framework of social reform, and with an ideological tinge, became the forerunners of sociology.
Prior to the birth of sociology, considerable literature was generated on various aspects of human society and on different societies by thinkers and writers, as well as by social reformers from all intellectual traditions. They had written about the past of their societies, or about the ills of their current social situations. However, they did not deliberately work towards developing a science of society. In their writings, one can find many insights and some useful descriptions of prevailing social institutions and practices, or even prescriptions and proscriptions for good human behaviour, all very helpful inputs for understanding some aspects of society. But they do not add up to a meaningful compendium of theoretical insights needed for the comprehension of the social sphere. That is why it is important to make a distinction between what is sociologically relevant and what is sociology proper. Sociologically relevant literature provides the raw data for sociological analysis and generalization. Indian sociologists, for example, have worked on sacred scriptures, and on the writings of intellectual leaders and social reformers such as Mahatma Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave and B. R. Ambedkar. But these scriptures are neither sociological, nor are the social reformers qualified to be sociologists.
It is the ‘social’ that is the subject matter of sociology. Humans are described as ‘gregarious’, meaning companionable, looking for company, and somewhat extroverted, rather than withdrawn. Interactions with other persons create the domain of the ‘social’. The permanent character of interactions with the same set of individuals for some specific purpose, or a diffused array of purposes, results in the formation of groups that have their lives longer than the lives of its members. It is the larger group, a group of groups, which forms a society. The interactions (i) between two or more individuals, (ii) between an individual and a group, and (iii) between various groups thus draw the contours of the social.
Social phenomena are as old as humans. Through interactions, humans have created a variety of relationship structures, developed a multitude of practices, nurtured beliefs, and evolved different knowledge systems to guide the life of an individual from the ‘cradle to the grave’. The nature of the social phenomena is so very complex that its science—proper understanding—is still in the process of evolving. In many ways it is still a nascent science.
Sociology can justify its claim to be a science of society when its concepts and theories are applicable not only to the societies of Europe or the developed world, but to all societies of the world, primitive or modern, European or non-European, historical or contemporary, and small or complex. However, the initial theories (whether they can be called theories is a different issue) that came from Europe were based on the limited experience of European societies, and thus were parochial in nature. They were, however, circulated as universal and accepted for long rather uncritically. As the science of sociology spread to other regions of the world and research was carried out in strange settings, their limitations came to the fore. In the 1980s, this led to a demand for the indigenization of social sciences, not for adding more parochial theories drawn from the non-West, but for developing theories that are universally applicable (see Atal, 1981: 189–97).
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