Читать книгу Essentials of Sociology - George Ritzer - Страница 31

A nineteenth-century sociologist, Auguste Comte, was important not only for inventing the term sociology in 1839 but also for being the originator of sociology as a field. Crucial for our purposes here is his early distinction between what he called “social statics” and “social dynamics.” In his social statics, Comte looked at the various “parts” (structures) of society, such as the manufacturers and retailers of clothing fashions, and the ways in which they relate to one another as well as to the whole of society. In examining such relationships, Comte investigated social processes among and between parts of society as well as in society as a whole. However, under the heading of social dynamics, his main focus was on a specific social process—social change—and how the various parts of society change.

It is important to emphasize that social structures are enduring and regular social arrangements, such as the family and the state. While social structures do change, they are generally not very dynamic; they change very slowly. Social processes are the dynamic and ever-changing aspects of the social world.

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) invented the term sociology, argued that the discipline should be a science, and created a general theory of the social world.

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The elements of globalization can be divided between structures (e.g., the United Nations) and a variety of more specific social processes (e.g., the migration of people across national borders). In terms of consumption, we can think of the shopping mall (or Amazon.com) as a structure and the shopping (or consumption) that takes place in it as a process. Finally, the internet as a whole and social networking sites in particular are structures, while the communication and the social interaction that take place in them can be viewed as processes.

Needless to say, neither the shopping mall nor the internet existed in Comte’s day. Once again, we see that the social world is constantly changing and that sociologists, as well as students of sociology, must be sensitive to those changes. However, some of sociology’s earliest concepts continue to be applicable, and usefully applied, to the social world.