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EDITED BY

Michele Dillon

This edition first published 2021

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Library of Congress Cataloging‐in‐Publication Data Names: Dillon, Michele, 1960– editor. Title: Concise reader in sociological theory : theorists, concepts, and current applications / edited by Michele Dillon. Description: First Edition. | Hoboken : Wiley, 2020. | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020029242 (print) | LCCN 2020029243 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119536185 (paperback) | ISBN 9781119536192 (adobe pdf) | ISBN 9781119536178 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Sociology. | Social scientists. Classification: LCC HM585 .C65397 2020 (print) | LCC HM585 (ebook) | DDC 301–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020029242LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020029243

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Cover Image: Courtesy of Michele Dillon

Sociological theory offers a rich conceptual tool‐kit with which to think about and analyze our contemporary society. As we reflect upon what it means to live and to understand others in today’s complex world, the insights of sociological theorists provide us with concepts that greatly illuminate the array of social and institutional processes, group dynamics, and cultural motivations that drive the patterns of persistence and change variously evident across local, national, and global contexts. Sociology is a comparatively young discipline. It owes its origins to the principles and values established by eighteenth‐century Enlightenment philosophers, namely the core assumptions that human reason is the source of knowledge, and though of different orders, the source of moral truth and of scientific truth; and that, by virtue of being endowed with human reason, all people are created equal and thus should be free to govern themselves in all matters, including political governance – thus motivating the democratic revolutions of the eighteenth century in America (1776) and in France (1789) and leading to the decline of monarchies and the establishment instead of democratic societies.

It was the French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798–1857) who coined the term sociology in 1839. He was influenced by the Enlightenment emphasis on scientific principles and believed that a science of the social world was necessary to discover and illuminate based on rigorous empirical observation how society works, that is to identify, as he saw it, a “social physics” parallel to the laws of physics and other natural sciences, and to advance social progress as a result of the data yielded from the scientific study of society. In his view, because sociology could and should study all aspects of social life, he argued that sociology would be the science of humanity, the science of society, and would outline “the most systematic theory of the human order” (Comte 1891/1973: 1). Harriet Martineau (1802–76), the English feminist and writer, commonly regarded as the first woman sociologist, translated Comte’s writings into English in 1855 (Hoecker‐Drysdale 1992). Additionally, in her own influential writing she emphasized both the breadth of topics that sociologists can/should study as well as the importance of studying them with rigor and objectivity. In her well‐known book How to Observe Morals and Manners (1838), morals and manners referencing the substantive, wide‐ranging content of sociology (and its encompassing of social class, religion, health, suicide, pop culture, crime, and the arts, among other topics), Martineau also argued that because social life is human‐centered it is different to the natural world. Unlike atoms, for example, humans have emotions. Hence, Martineau pointed to the need for sociologists as scientists to develop the empathy necessary to the observation and understanding of the human condition and to how it manifests in the course of their inquiry. She wrote: