Read Africa - eBooks | Read eBooks online

A Sociology Exhibit

Organizing Relationships

Domesday Studies, Being the Papers Read ... Volume 2 (by Domesday Commemoration)
Manifesto of the Communist Party (by Marx, Karl)
The Challenge of the Country: A Study of... (by George Walter Fiske, Young Mens Christian Associat...)
The Theory of the Leisure Class (by Veblen, Thorstein)
The Threefold State, The True Aspect of ... (by Steiner, Rudolf)
The Sexual Question : A Scientific, Psyc... (by Auguste Forel)
A Study of Siouan Cults (by Dorsey, James Owen)
The Christian Faith and Human Relations ... (by Bitting, William Coleman)
Woman : Her Charm and Power (by Downes, Robert P.)
A Far Country (by Churchill, Winston)
Toward a general theory of action (by Parsons, Talcott)
Social Control; A Survey of the Foundati... (by Ross, Edward Alsworth)
Orion or the Antiquity of the Vedas. (by Tilak, Bal Gangadhar)
Theories of Social Progress, A Critical ... (by Todd, Arthur James)
Sex: Avoided Subjects Discussed in Plain... (by Henry Stanton)

Organizing Relationships: A Sociology Exhibit

Many disciplines beyond Sociology, such as Mathematics and Psychology and Economics, are utilized in the Social Sciences. In our Collections under these and other topics, contain hundreds of titles by writers and theorists who have dedicated to their lives to the study of human society. Featured books in the following collections include Herbert Spencer, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Talcott Parsons and David Emile Durkheim.

Sociology of Past Power Structures

Throughout history, all sub-disciplines of Sociology, as well and religious and government groups have been studied and experimented with different methods of social organization of population. Sometimes, these attempts at social definitions and control have been tempered, but at other times, rigid – some men have use groups for their own gain. Ultimately, however, if social organization is to be implemented, it has to be understood.

From the beginning of time, both men and animals have used verbal and non-verbal cues and strategies to enforce hierarchy. With chimpanzees, it is the Alpha Male. With men: Domesday Books, mathematics and accounting, psychology and linguistics. The word “organization” is derived from the Greek word organon, which means "organ." Therefore, studies of how groups of people (with a common goal) structure themselves, is the study of mankind and its relationships as a collective.

The Domesday Book, created under the reign of William the Conqueror, has been studied to understand the role of documentation in asserting authority and also to facilitate taxation. According to Young Folks’ History of England, William the Conqueror was a Norman who conquered England. In 1086, he ordered the documentation of land, livestock and taxes under the administration of the previous rulers, to find out what would be transferred over to Norman rule. Whatever was recorded in the Domesday book could not be appealed. The data that William the Conqueror collected into the Domesday book revealed his tendency for control. In the book titled, William the Conqueror, it is said that “William would not set...over any part of his dominions before his time, and it was his policy to keep his children dependent on him. While he enriched his brothers, he did not give the smallest scrap of the spoils of England to his sons” (William the Conqueror, World Heritage Encyclopedia). Robert, his son, was angry about this and fought his father in a battle, but later asked for his pardon. Today, the Domesday Books is considered an artifact of sociological research. Domesday Studies, Being the Papers Read at the Meetings of the Domesday Commemoration 1886 examines how this document changed the course of history in the United Kingdom (Domesday Studies, Being the Papers Read at the Meetings of the Domesday Commemoration 1886, Edward P. Dove).

Debates in Defining Sociology

Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet was a 19th-Century Belgian mathematician, statistician and sociologist who introduced statistical methods into the social sciences. He assigned variables to the complexity of social phenomena, in order to measure the statistical laws underlying crime, marriage or suicide rates. Other scientists thought his ideas were controversial because it contradicted freedom of choice (“Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet,” World Heritage Encyclopedia).

The author of Adolphe Quetelet, A Statistician discusses Auguste Comte as another researcher of social physics and sociology, but that Quetelet invented the method of investigation for “social physics” (Adolphe Quetelet as Statistician, Frank Hamilton Hawkins). So Comte reinvented the term sociologie (sociology) to differentiate it from Quetelet’s collection of statistics (“Adolphe Quetelet,” World Heritage Encyclopedia). Comte believed that there was an order of nature, not of man, which could be scientifically understood by unifying history, psychology and economics. Social ills could be remedied through sociological positivism, or using a broader philosophy that methodologically orders scientific observations (Outlines of Sociology, Lester Frank Ward). In this book, Ward writes Comte’s use of the term “hierarchy” did not imply subordination. “There is genetic affiliation without subordination. The more complex and less exact sciences may be regarded as the children of the more simple and exact ones, but between parent and offspring there is no difference or rank.” Additionally, he wrote that Comte “laid the foundations for understanding the more complex sciences by acquainting himself with the simpler ones upon which the other sciences successively rest” (Outlines of Sociology, Lester Frank Ward). Other social scientists like Karl Marx also mixed scientific methods to measure social impacts of industrialization occurring in Europe, documented in his work Wage Labour and Capital ("Wage Labour and Capital," Karl Marx).

Studying Social Life

David Émile Durkheim was a 19th century French sociologist who believed that sociology should study phenomena attributed to society at large, rather than being limited to the specific actions of individuals. Barbara Anne Mendheim however, applied sociology differently in The Sociology of Gender in a Kindergarten-First Grade Classroom. She writes that people gain knowledge of the social world by identifying typicality and finding language to order their social experience. For example, girls understand that being a girl means being personally relevant and intimate with other people. Boys understand being a boy through being powerful and competent in the world (The Sociology of Gender in a Kindergarten-First Grade Classroom, Barbara Anne Mendheim). However, in Woman: Her Charm and Power, Robert Downes uses sociological methods to explore how women in Egyptian and Iranian society were given opportunity for education and in leadership. But in Roman culture, women’s roles were to birth children. Women’s positions in society are influenced by the dominant culture’s definition of their functions and role in society (Woman: Her Charm and Power, Robert Downes).

Sociology has also been used to study group relations. Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism discusses how entrepreneurs used religion to spread the system of capitalism. By tapping into religious belief systems, he proffered, people could work toward their profit making motive.

Works Cited

"August Compte." World Heritage Encyclopedia. WorldLibrary.org. Web. 2014.

“David Émile Durkheim.” World Heritage Encyclopedia. WorldLibrary.org. Web. 2014.

"Domesday Book." World Heritage Encyclopedia. WorldLibrary.org. Web. 2014.

Dove, P. Edward. "Domesday Studies, Being the Papers Read at the Meetings of the Domesday Commemoration 1886." London: Longmans, Green and Company, 1886.

Downes, Robert. Woman: Her Charm and Power. London: The Epworth Press, 1900.

Hawkins, Frank Hamilton. Adolphe Quetelet as Statistician. New York: Columbia University Press, 1877.

“Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet.” World Heritage Encyclopedia. WorldLibrary.org. Web. 2014.

Marx, Karl. "Wage Labour and Capital." Neue Rheinische Zeitung, April 1849. Reproduced: World Public Library, 2002. Web.

Mendheim, Barbara Anne. The Sociology of Gender in a Kindergarten-First Grade Classroom. Diss. University of Florida, 1979.

“Norman People.” World Heritage Encyclopedia. WorldLibrary.org. Web. 2014.

"Sociology." World Heritage Encyclopedia. WorldLibrary.org. Web. 2014.

Ward, Lester Frank. Outlines of Sociology. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1921.

Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Scribner, 1930

“William the Conqueror.” World Heritage Encyclopedia. WorldLibrary.org. Web. 2014.

Yonge, Charlotte Mary. Young Folks’ History of England. Boston: Estes and Lauriet, 1879.

Sociology Collections

"Organizing Relationships: A Sociology Exhibit" demonstrates how sociological methods have been used to study the configuration of power, through documentation, analysis of order, and social effects. Sociology brings together different methods of thinking, to understand the complexity of society more accurately, and why we should always be vigilant of power.

Learn more about how the discipline of sociology is used, in these collections:

Top 100 books on Sociology

Domesday Studies, Being the Papers Read ... Volume 2 (by Domesday Commemoration)
Manifesto of the Communist Party (by Marx, Karl)
The Challenge of the Country: A Study of... (by George Walter Fiske, Young Mens Christian Associat...)
The Theory of the Leisure Class (by Veblen, Thorstein)
The Threefold State, The True Aspect of ... (by Steiner, Rudolf)
The Sexual Question : A Scientific, Psyc... (by Auguste Forel)
A Study of Siouan Cults (by Dorsey, James Owen)
The Christian Faith and Human Relations ... (by Bitting, William Coleman)
Woman : Her Charm and Power (by Downes, Robert P.)
A Far Country (by Churchill, Winston)
Toward a general theory of action (by Parsons, Talcott)
Social Control; A Survey of the Foundati... (by Ross, Edward Alsworth)
Orion or the Antiquity of the Vedas. (by Tilak, Bal Gangadhar)
Theories of Social Progress, A Critical ... (by Todd, Arthur James)
Sex: Avoided Subjects Discussed in Plain... (by Henry Stanton)

Top 100 books on Psychology

On dreams (by Freud, Sigmund)
The Psychology of Beauty (by Puffer, Ethel D.)
Nerves and Common Sense (by Call, Annie Payson)
Why Worry? (by George Lincoln Walton)
Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusio... (by Charles Mackay)
Buddhist Psychology; An Inquiry into the... (by Davids, Caroline Augusta Foley Rhys)
Dream Psychology : Psychoanalysis for Be... (by Sigmund Freud)
An Introduction to the Theory of Mental ... (by Thorndike, Edward Lee)
Essay on the Creative Imagination (by Ribot, Théodule)
Memories Dreams Reflections (by C. G. Jung)
Psychologie de L'Éducation (by Gustave Le Bon)
Mind and Motion and Monism (by Romanes, George John)
Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing (by Cutten, George Barton)
Behavior an Introduction to Comparative ... (by John B. Watson)
The Elements of Psychology (by Edward Lee Thorndike)

Top 100 books on Economics

Utopia (by More, Thomas, Sir, Saint)
The Evolution of Finance Capitalism (by Edwards, George W.)
Democracy in America, Vol. 1 (by De Tocqueville, Alexis)
Progress and Poverty; an Inquiry Into th... (by George, Henry, 1839-1897)
Democracy in America I (by Tocqueville, Alexis de)
Mutual Aid (by Kropotkin, P.)
Anarchism and Other Essays (by Emma Goldman)
The Abolition of Poverty (by Hollander, Jacob Harry)
Prince, The (Version 2) (by Machiavelli, Niccolo)
Leviathan (by Hobbes, Thomas)
Das Kapital (by Karl Marx)
The Decline of American Capitalism (by Corey, Lewis)
Looking Backward from 2000 to 1887 (by Bellamy, Edward)
Wage-Labor and Capital (by Marx, Karl)
The Prince (by Machiavelli, Niccolò)

Top 100 books on Government

The Law of Nations; (by Vattel, Emer De)
Declaration of Independence of the Unite... (by United States, Founding Fathers of the)
On the Law of War and Peace (by Grotius, Hugo)
Of the Law of Nature and Nations : Eight... (by Pufendorf, Samuel, Freiherr Von)
Albany Plan of Union (by Franklin, Benjamin)
Utopia (by More, Thomas, Sir)
Lao-Tzu : A Study in Chinese Philosophy (by Watters, Thomas)
Uncle Tom's Cabin (by Stowe, Harriet Beecher)
The Union of Utrecht (by Lucy Maynard Salmon)
The Declaration of Independence and Lett... (by Jefferson, Thomas)
Machiavelli (by Machiavelli, Niccolò)
The Code of Hammurabi (by King, Leonard W.)
Why wars come; or, Forms of government a... (by Niblack, Albert Parker)
Virginia Declaration of Rights and Cardi... (by Mason, George)
The Historical, Political, And Diplomati... (by Niccolò Machiavelli)

Top 100 books on Law

Laws, Decisions, And Regulations Affecti... (by United States)
The Art of War (by Tzu, Sun)
The British Constitution; Or, An Epitome... (by Sir William Blackstone)
Report on the Right of the Government of... (by United States. Division of Insular Affairs)
Extraterritorial Cases, Including the De... Volume Vol. 1 (by United States. Court for China)
The Treaty Making Power of the United St... (by Butler, Charles Henry)
Meditations (by Aurelius, Marcus)
The Trial and Death of Socrates (by Plato)
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of... (by Department of National Security)
The Idea of a League of Nations; Prolego... (by League of Nations Union)
Marrow of Tradition, The (by Chesnutt, Charles Waddell)
Conflict of Laws; Or, Private Internatio... (by Minor, Raleigh C)
Oliver Twist (by Dickens, Charles)
Utilitarianism (by Mill, John Stuart)
Bleak House (by Dickens, Charles)

Top 100 books on Politics

Jungle, The (by Sinclair, Upton)
Capital : A Critique of Political Econom... (by Marx, Karl)
The Laws of Plato; (by Plato)
Gulliver's Travels (by Swift, Jonathan)
On Liberty (by Mill, J. S.)
Candide (by Voltaire)
Heart of Darkness (by Conrad, Joseph)
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (by Franklin, Benjamin)
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Dougl... (by Douglass, Frederick)
Gulliver's Travels (by Swift, Jonathan)
Das Kapital (by Karl Marx)
The Jungle (by Sinclair, Upton)
The Soul of Man under Socialism (by Oscar Wilde)
The Elements of Law Natural and Politic (by Hobbes, Thomas)
Anthem (by Rand, Ayn)

Top 100 books on Anthropology

The Living World : Containing Descriptio... Volume v 1 (by Arnold, Augustus C. L.)
Anthropology : An Introduction to the St... (by Edward Burnett Tylor)
Early Civilization : An Introduction to ... (by Alexander A. Goldenweiser)
The Dolmens of Ireland, Their Distributi... Volume 1 (by Borlase, William Copeland)
The History of Mankind (by Ratzel, Friedrich)
Criminal Sociology (by Ferri, Enrico)
The Genetic Relationship of the North Am... (by Radin, Paul)
Ancient Society (by Lewis Henry Morgan)
The American Beaver and His Works (by Lewis Henry Morgan)
Pedagogical Anthropology (by Montessori, Maria)
International Catalogue of Scientific Li... (by Royal Society, Great Britain)
The Golden Bough : A Study in Magic and ... (by Frazer, James George, Sir)
Argonauts of the Western Pacific (by Malinowski, Bronislaw)
On the Functions of the Brain and of Eac... (by Gall, F. J., Franz Joséf)
Frederick Webb Hodge, Ethnologist : Tran... (by Hodge, Frederick Webb)

Top 100 books on Mathematics

A Treatise on Probability (by Keynes, John Maynard)
Deductive Logic (by Stock, St. George)
A New Era of Thought (by Hinton, Charles Howard)
Carl Friedrich Gauss' Untersuchungen übe... (by Hermann Maser, Carl Friedrich Gauss)
Vorlesungen über Zahlentheorie (by Lejeune-Dirichlet, Peter Gustav)
Flatland : A Romance of Many Dimensions (by Edwin Abbott)
The Alphabet of Economic Science (by Philip Henry Wicksteed)
An Introduction to the Theory of Numbers... (by Ivan Niven)
A treatise on differential equations (by Boole, George)
Cocker's Decimal Arithmetick : Wherein I... (by Cocker, Edward)
An Introduction to Mathematics (by Alfred North Whitehead)
The First Six Books of the Elements of E... (by Euclides)
Symbolic logic (by Carroll, Lewis)
The Philosophy of Mathematics (by Comte, Auguste)
The Golden Verses of Pythagoras (by Fabre Dolivet, Antoine)

Top 100 books on Economics

Utopia (by More, Thomas, Sir, Saint)
The Evolution of Finance Capitalism (by Edwards, George W.)
Democracy in America, Vol. 1 (by De Tocqueville, Alexis)
Progress and Poverty; an Inquiry Into th... (by George, Henry, 1839-1897)
Democracy in America I (by Tocqueville, Alexis de)
Mutual Aid (by Kropotkin, P.)
Anarchism and Other Essays (by Emma Goldman)
The Abolition of Poverty (by Hollander, Jacob Harry)
Prince, The (Version 2) (by Machiavelli, Niccolo)
Leviathan (by Hobbes, Thomas)
Das Kapital (by Karl Marx)
The Decline of American Capitalism (by Corey, Lewis)
Looking Backward from 2000 to 1887 (by Bellamy, Edward)
Wage-Labor and Capital (by Marx, Karl)
The Prince (by Machiavelli, Niccolò)