ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 offers some initial thoughts on the emergence and diffusion of the sociological way of seeing and thinking about the world of human societies and cultures. There is a low tradition in sociology that is represented by the motley collection of titles in the sociology sections of the bookstores I used to frequent before the Age of Amazon. That tradition is also expressed in images of sociology as a “soft science,” a form of socialism or social work, and a pretentious jargon that disguises common sense in the trappings of science. Even the idea that sociology is a “hard science,” to the extent that it entails a sexist and scientistic view of the field and stresses formal and methodological concerns over substantive social ones, is part of the low tradition. This book is designed as an introduction to the high tradition in sociology. The high tradition in sociology traces its roots to the revolutionary discoveries about society made by Madame DeStael, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Harriet Martineau, Emile Durkheim, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, G.H. Mead, L. Gumplowicz, Jane Adams and others between 1840 and 1930.
