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A Sociology Exhibit

Organizing Relationships

The Evolution of the Country Community :... (by Wilson, Warren Hugh)
Wage Labour and Capital (by Marx, Karl)
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonapar... (by Marx, Karl)
Almost a Man (by Wood-Allen, Mary)
Woman : Her Charm and Power (by Downes, Robert P.)
Homo-Culture; Or, The Improvement of Off... (by Holbrook, Martin Luther)
The Sexual Life of the Child (by Moll, Albert)
Down with the Cities! (by Nakashima, Tadashi)
Young Folks, History of England (by Yonge, Charlotte Mary)
A History of Social Thought (by Emory Stephen Bogardus)
Professional ethics and civic morals (by Durkheim, Emile)
What a Young Woman Ought to Know (by Wood-Allen, Mary)
The Structure of Social Action; A Study ... (by Parsons, Talcott)
Society, Its Origin and Development (by Rowe, Henry Kalloch)
The Challenge of the Country: A Study of... (by George Walter Fiske, Young Mens Christian Associat...)

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

The Evolution of the Country Community :... (by Wilson, Warren Hugh)
Wage Labour and Capital (by Marx, Karl)
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonapar... (by Marx, Karl)
Almost a Man (by Wood-Allen, Mary)
Woman : Her Charm and Power (by Downes, Robert P.)
Homo-Culture; Or, The Improvement of Off... (by Holbrook, Martin Luther)
The Sexual Life of the Child (by Moll, Albert)
Down with the Cities! (by Nakashima, Tadashi)
Young Folks, History of England (by Yonge, Charlotte Mary)
A History of Social Thought (by Emory Stephen Bogardus)
Professional ethics and civic morals (by Durkheim, Emile)
What a Young Woman Ought to Know (by Wood-Allen, Mary)
The Structure of Social Action; A Study ... (by Parsons, Talcott)
Society, Its Origin and Development (by Rowe, Henry Kalloch)
The Challenge of the Country: A Study of... (by George Walter Fiske, Young Mens Christian Associat...)

Top 100 books on Psychology

Crime and Punishment (by Dostoevsky, Fyodor)
The Elements of Psychology (by Edward Lee Thorndike)
Supreme Personality (by Croft, Delmer Eugene)
The teacher's word book (by Thorndike, Edward L. (Edward Lee))
Malignant Self Love (by Vaknin, Sam)
Diary Written in the Provincial Lunatic ... (by Pengilly, Mary Huestis)
The Misuse of Mind (by Stephen, Karin)
Ten Days in a Madhouse (by Bly, Nellie)
Applied Psychology for Nurses (by Mary F. Porter)
Animal Intelligence : Experimental Studi... (by Thorndike, Edward Lee)
Applied Psychology : A Series of Twelve ... (by Warren Hilton)
The Nervous Housewife (by Myerson, Abraham)
The Psychology of Beauty (by Ethel Dench Puffer)
Studies in Forensic Psychiatry (by Glueck, Bernard)
Freud and the Scientific Method (by Rosenfels, Paul)

Top 100 books on Economics

The Theory of the Leisure Class (by Veblen, Thorstein)
Walden Or, Life in the Woods (by Thoreau, Henry David)
The Social Contract, Or Principles of Po... (by Rousseau, Jean Jacques)
Wage Labour and Capital (by Marx, Karl)
Tableau Oeconomique (by François Quesnay)
On Colonialism (by Marx, Karl)
Woman under Capitalism (by Tichenor, Henry Mulford)
An Essay on the Principle of Population (by Malthus, Thomas)
Annie Besant : An Autobiography (by Annie Wood Besant)
On the Principles of Political Economy, ... (by David Ricardo)
Common Sense (by Paine, Thomas)
The Bolsheviki and World Peace (by Trotsky, Leon)
Minorities Versus Majorities (by Goldman, Emma)
Walden (by Thoreau, Henry David)
Democracy in America I (by Tocqueville, Alexis de)

Top 100 books on Government

Assize of Clarendon (by Henry, King, Ii)
The Constitutional Documents of the Puri... (by Gardiner, Samuel Rawson)
Lex, Rex : The Law and the Prince, A Dis...
The Prince (by Machiavelli, Niccolò)
The Works of Walter Moyle: None of which... (by Walter Moyle, Thomas Sergeant)
The American's Guide: Comprising the Dec...
The Prince (by Machiavelli, Niccolò)
Declaration of Colonial Rights : Resolut...
Prince, The (Version 2) (by Machiavelli, Niccolo)
Chronological Tables of the Chinese Dyna... (by E. R. Lyman, Tso-Ting Wang, Theodore Wong)
Machiavelli (by Machiavelli, Niccolò)
Utopia (by More, Thomas, Sir)
Columbia Law Review (by Columbia University. School of Law)
Rights of Man, Score Aor Rom Volume Vol. II (by Paine, Thomas)
Introduction to the Principles of Morals... (by Bentham, Jeremy)

Top 100 books on Law

The Republic of Cicero (by Marcus Tullius Cicero)
Conflict of Laws; Or, Private Internatio... (by Minor, Raleigh C)
Federal Civil Rights Enforcement Effort;... Volume Year 1970 (by United States Commission On Civil Rights)
Fulfilling the Letter and Spirit of the ... (by United States Commission On Civil Rights)
Bank Secrecy Act : Implementation of the... (by Bonner, Robert C.)
The Usa Patriot Act: A Legal Analysis (by Doyle, Charles)
Crime and Custom in Savage Society (by Malinowski, Bronislaw, 1884-1942)
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of... (by Department of National Security)
The Fiscal Threat to U.S. Foreign Policy (by Spiers, Ronald I.)
Nuclear proliferation : future U.S. fore... (by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Inter...)
Bartleby the Scrivener, A Story of Wall ... (by Melville, Herman)
The Athenian Constitution ; The Eudemian... (by Aristotle)
The spirit of the laws; Volume: 11 (by Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron de)
Report on the Right of the Government of... (by United States. Division of Insular Affairs)
North American Free-Trade Agreement (Naf... (by United States. Congress. House. Committee On Ways ...)

Top 100 books on Politics

The Subjection of Women (by Mill, John Stuart)
An Introduction to the Principles of Mor... (by Bentham, Jeremy)
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawy... (by Twain, Mark)
The Trial and Death of Socrates (by Plato)
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (by Franklin, Benjamin)
The Souls of Black Folk (by Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt)
Federalist Papers, The (by Hamilton, Alexander)
Wealth of Nations, Book 1, The (by Smith, Adam)
Anarchism and Other Essays (by Emma Goldman)
Political Ideals (by Russell, Bertrand)
Walden (by Thoreau, Henry David)
Gulliver's Travels (by Swift, Jonathan)
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of C... (by Weber, Max)
Leviathan (by Hobbes, Thomas)
Proposed Roads to Freedom : Socialism, A... (by Russell, Bertrand)

Top 100 books on Anthropology

The Dolmens of Ireland, Their Distributi... Volume 3 (by Borlase, William Copeland)
Man Past and Present (by Keane, Augustus Henry)
American Anthropologist : Vol. 06 Part 0... Volume Vol. 06 Part 04 (by American Anthropological Association)
On the Functions of the Brain and of Eac... (by Gall, F. J., Franz Joséf)
An Anthropologist's Life in the Twentiet... (by Foster, George Mcclelland)
Bulletin (by United States Bureau of Labor)
Anthropology and Modern Life (by Boas, Franz)
Curators, Collections, And Contexts : An... Volume Fieldiana, Anthropology, new series, no.36 (by Field Museum of Natural History)
Ancient Art and Ritual (by Jane Ellen Harrison)
Man : Volume 1 (by Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain a...)
Early Civilization : An Introduction to ... (by Alexander A. Goldenweiser)
Animal Figures in the Maya Codices (by Tozzer, Alfred M. (Alfred Marston))
Anthropology (by Marett, R. R. (Robert Ranulph))
Nayars of Malabar Volume Iii (by Fawcett, F.)
Criminal Sociology (by Ferri, Enrico)