4. Sociological Tradition

Question 0

The discipline of sociology emerged as a ____ ____ to reflect upon and process the basic experiences of modern society.

Answer 0

crisis science

Question 1

Marx, Durkheim and Weber are known as the ‘____ ____’ of sociology.

Answer 1

founding fathers

Question 2

Marx theorised the establishment of modern society in terms of the move from a feudal mode of production to a ____ mode of production.

Answer 2

capitalist

Question 3

Durkheim thematised the change in terms of the transition from societies characterised by what he termed ____ solidarity to societies characterised by organic solidarity.

Answer 3

mechanical

Question 4

Weber reflected upon the birth of modern society against the backdrop of the incessant torrent of ____.

Answer 4

rationalisation

Question 5

It should be noted at this point that three major events propelled forward the rise of modern society: the cultural ____ of the eighteenth century known as the Enlightenment, the political ____ of North America and France in the late eighteenth century, and the Industrial ____ of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Answer 5

revolution

Question 6

____ can be aptly described as the ‘sacred cow of Enlightenment thinkers.

Answer 6

Reason

Question 7

Enlightenment thinkers underlined the primacy of human reason as a way of thinking about the world and acquiring ____.

Answer 7

knowledge

Question 8

With the onset of the Enlightenment, then, reason (rationality) superseded ____ ____ as the dominant form of knowing.

Answer 8

religious faith

Question 9

Similarly, Marx, Durkheim and Weber were very much committed to the ____ mode of establishing knowledge about the nature of modern society.

Answer 9

rational

Question 10

The Enlightenment thinkers underscored the importance of supplementing the faculty of reason by experience. This is tantamount to saying that all knowledge about nature and society is underpinned by ____ ____.

Answer 10

empirical facts

Question 11

Knowledge is obtained through ____ ____.

Answer 11

sense perception

Question 12

The sociological pattern of thinking promoted by Marx, Durkheim and Weber was deemed to be an ____ analysis of modern society.

Answer 12

empirical

Question 13

The Enlightenment thinkers espousal of empiricism is closely connected with their ____, ____ attitude which is basic to all the modern sciences, including the social sciences (eg, sociology).

Answer 13

methodical, scientific

Question 14

The development of Marx’s, Durkheim’s and Weber’s intellectual identity was filtered through this ____ culture. The founding thinkers all were committed to engaging in a strictly empirical scientific analysis of modern society

Answer 14

scientific

Question 15

The Enlightenment thinkers were wholly committed to human ____, that is the idea that the condition of human beings could be improved by the employment of human reason and modern science.

Answer 15

progress

Question 16

The ____ ____ of France and North America in the late eighteenth century are known as democratic revolutions. The guiding principles of the French Revolution were liberty, fraternity and equality.

Answer 16

political revolutions

Question 17

Political ____ according to the revolutionaries would remain an illusion unless grounded in equality and fraternity.

Answer 17

liberty

Question 18

____ was understood in the sense of the recognition of the rights of the individual both as a man/woman and citizen, as distinct from being a mere subject of the monarchy.

Answer 18

Equality

Question 19

____, on the other hand, was apprehended as a community or association of free and equal individuals which is separate from the state.

Answer 19

Fraternity

Question 20

With the onset of the French and North American political revolutions, a sea-change occurred in the total ____ of people living in the West.

Answer 20

world-view

Question 21

Even if the great secular ideals of the revolutionaries have not (yet!) been fully realised they have created an atmosphere of ____ ____ that has become one of the great dynamic forces of the post-revolutionary era in the West.

Answer 21

political change

Question 22

Marx argued that the great radical principles of the French Revolution had in fact only been introduced in a selective way, that is, liberty, fraternity and equality for the ____ (capitalist owners of the means of production) at the expense of the ____ (the workers) with nothing to sell but their capacity to labour.

Answer 22

bourgeoisie, proletariat

Question 23

The ____ ____ (like the political revolutions) shaped the emerging discipline of sociology and, more particularly, Marx, Durkheim and Weber.

Answer 23

Industrial Revolution

Question 24

The ____ of European society is also inextricably intertwined with the Industrial Revolution. There was a mass migration of peasants from the land into the expanding industrial cities like Manchester.

Answer 24

urbanisation

Question 25

Marx’s concepts such as ____, ____, ____ and ____ were developed against the backdrop of the worst excesses of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, when the workers (including women and children) toiling away in the factories had virtually no legal protection from ruthless exploitation by their capitalist employers.

Answer 25

class, exploitation, alienation and ideology

Question 26

Durkheim’s concept of ____ or normlessness is a refraction of the experiences of many people in the emerging modern, industrial urban society isolated from what he regarded as the cohesive and stabilising forces of community and tradition.

Answer 26

anomie

Question 27

Weber as already indicated, theorised the establishment of modern society against the backcloth of the inexorable onslaught of ____ - a society characterised by a capitalist economy a bureaucratic state apparatus and a differentated, secular culture.

Answer 27

rationalisation

Question 28

The discipline of sociology emerged in the work of Marx, Durkheim and Weber as both a ____ and ____ exploration of the causes and significance of the great transformation of European society in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Answer 28

conceptual and empirical