SOCIOLOGY AS A HUMANISTIC DISCIPLINE

                     SOCIOLOGY AS A HUMANISTIC DISCIPLINE


Peter L. Berger’s Book INVITATION TO SOCIOLOGY: A HUMANISTIC PERSPECTIVE is a book about sociology as a scientific methodology and a perspective through which the world can be explored.

The author’s major proposition is that sociology is not limited to statistics to which many people often reduce the importance of the science and it is not even limited to being a particular scientific discipline that is part of social science. But it world view in a way sociologist approach various situations in which people orient their actions towards one another i.e. social situations from the perspectives of these interactions and build a system of method to analyze social process.

According to Berger sociology’s ongoing communication with other discipline that are vitally concerned with exploring human conditions. (Berger 1963:168)

He explains humanistic perspective through comparing humans to puppets in a puppet theatre; unlike puppets humans are capable of looking up and perceiving the machinery by which they have been moved (Berger 1963:176).

The vision of sociology as a discipline that helps people move towards freedom is what makes this science humanistic.

The book aims to make people understand that sociology is not a measurement of social process with statistical tools or abstract theories but a discipline that addressed social and humanistic issues from scholarly perspective.

Teaching sociology is justified because liberal education should be more than an etymological link to intellectual liberation. Liberal education means the ability to understand the logic of society to go behind a respected, self-evident and official. Therefore, the study of sociology as an etymological connection with intellectual liberation in the conditions of the French Revolution, the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment, which speak of revolutionary changes in society. If this assumption does not exist, if education is understood as purely technical or vocational, sociology should dominate the curriculum.

Sociology is justified by the belief that it is better be conscious than unconscious and that consciousness is a condition of freedom.

Sociology is the ability to think freely and be fully aware of who I am, the sources of my beliefs and prejudices, and why I feel the way I do. For example, if I want to be very rich, under what conditions do I want to be very rich. Does the society I live in propels me this way.

Education, Sociology and freedom are closely related. Achieving greater awareness and with it freedom comes with a certain amount of suffering and even risk. The educational process that avoids this has become a simple technical education, has ceased to have any connection with the civilization of the mind, because in the end education is the training of the mind.

Education is the ability to discover certain phenomena in its many forms. The phenomenon of how another person looks and perceives, and how I perceive and understand it. Then there is the question of why I look and perceive it in a particular fashion and why it seems different to others.

It able to ask large question of which kind of society produces which kind of people. Which kind of society produces which kind of aspirations and desires. What kind of society allows people to feel compassion for people who belong to a completely different group than themselves. this is the nature of democracy. we content that it is part of a civilized mind in our age have come in touch with the peculiarly modem, peculiarly timely form of critical thought that we call sociology.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

EMERGENCE OF SOCIOLOGY

Image
  EMERGENCE OF SOCIOLOGY   To understand the emergence of sociology in Europe we need to appreciate the relationship between society and ideas. There is always a connection between the social conditions of a period and the ideas, which arise and are dominant in that period. our country. For example when India was under the British Raj, she had to suffer all the ills of colonialism. Indians were economically exploited, politically bonded, socially humiliated, culturally bereft. At the same time, the Indian middleclass emerged as a product of the economic policies of colonialism. They had also been exposed to the liberal and radical European social thought. They were therefore disturbed by the exploitation of colonialism and started writing, campaigning and building up a movement to free India. Culture, theatre, songs, literature were pervaded by the spirit of freedom. Thus   ideas are normally rooted in their social context. It is in this context that we need to see th...
Read more

AUGUSTE COMTE (1798-1857)

Image
  AUGUSTE COMTE (1798-1857)   Auguste Marie Francois Xavier Comte the founding father of sociology was born at Montpellier, France in 1798 during the ferment of the French Revolution Educated at prestigious Ecole Polytechnique. At Ecole Polytechnique he came under the influence of traditional social philosophers like L.G. Bonald and Joseph de Maistre (borrowed the notion of an order governing the evolution of human society) Close friend and disciple of Saint Simon. Both wrote about law of three stages through which each branch of knowledge must pass. They said that the object of social physics and positive science of society later renamed as “Sociology” is to discover the natural and immutable laws of progress. These laws are as important to the science of society as the laws of Gravity, discovered by Newton, are to the natural sciences Later on the intellectual alliance between Saint Simon and Auguste Comte did not last long and in fact ended in a bitter quarr...
Read more

KINSHIP IN INDIA

  KINSHIP IN INDIA   Every individual has relationship with other people around them, this is the basic system that takes place in all human societies. It organizes people and groups and therefore it is known as kinship. Every kinship system is significantly a cultural system. It tends to vary from society to society. India is a land of immense diversity, its different regions reflect different systems of kinship. Kinship in India can be seen in families and outside families. Primary relatives focus in kinship within family also known as family of procreation. In India caste endogamy and clan exogamy are important aspect of kin structure. APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF KINSHIP SYSTEM IN INDIA Sociological studies of kinship in India cover descriptions, comparisons and analytical problems based on the findings from various regions. Approaches to the study of kinship in India can be classified in two major categories   INDOLOGICAL APPROACH The social insti...
Read more