ABSTRACT
Sociology is said by some of its present practitioners to be a science aiming to discover comprehensively general laws about human actions and institutions; these general laws are expected to be applicable to all human actions and institutions in whatever epoch and place. Other sociologists are less insistent on this view of their subject, claiming that their first task is to obtain precise knowledge of their contemporary society. In fact, most sociologists conduct their investigations into their own contemporaneous societies; this is partly a necessity of their preferred techniques of direct observation and interview and is partly a result of their paramount interests in their own societies. (It is also, in more recent decades, a result of the fact that an increasingly large proportion of sociological research is supported by governments that are interested in obtaining reliable information about contemporary conditions in their own society.) There are exceptions to this generalization; there are sociologists who study societies of the past and who go outside their own national boundaries; they have been increasing in number, but they are still a very small minority. Most sociologists study contemporary Western societies.
