Any science has its own subject, which is the result of theoretical abstraction, and which allows you to highlight certain patterns of development and functioning of the object. The specificity of sociology is that it studies society. So let's see how the founders defined the subject of sociology.
Auguste Comte, coined the very word "sociology", believed that the subject of science
is a holistic society based on universal consensus. The latter basically has the unity of human history and directly the nature of man. Another founder of science, the English scientist
Herbert Spencer, spent his whole life seeing a bourgeois society in front of him, which differentiated as it grew and maintained integrity thanks to the latest social institutions. According to Spencer, the subject of sociology is a society acting as a social organism, in which integrative processes are combined with differentiation due to the evolution of social institutions.
Karl Marx, who lived most of his life in England, was critical of the theory of Comte and Spencer. This was due to the fact that Marx believed that bourgeois society was in a deep crisis and was replaced by a socialist one. Soon he created his doctrine, which was defined as a
materialistic understanding of history. According to him, society does not develop at the expense of ideas, but at the expense of material
productive forces. Following this theory, the subject of sociology is society as an organic system developing in the direction of unity and integrity through the struggle of classes and revolution.
Thus, the founders of science agreed that its subject is society as a single reality. The direct role in the formation of different approaches was played by socio-philosophical and value-political approaches.
The second stage in the formation of this science is associated with its development in unity with the methodology. The representative of this period is the early theoretical and methodological classics. At this time (the 80s of the 19th century - before the First World War), the development of the main methodological principles of social research, the realization of approaches to the object and ways to obtain empirical information about it, are being developed. An important contribution to this direction was made by the German sociologist F. Tennis.
In the process of his scientific work, he analyzed the data of social statistics, conducted empirical studies of the lower class of Hamburg, investigated the state of crime and the level of tendencies to suicide. As a result of the work,
empirical sociology appeared as a descriptive discipline.
According to Tennis, the subject of sociology is formed by the types of sociality, society and community, which are based on the will of human interaction. However, the content and sources of will remained unclear. In the same period, Adler actively studied the subject of the sociology of culture, namely the social factors of the formation of cultural values and basic norms. However, later this theory was criticized.
The next stage was the development of a mature theoretical and methodological classics. This period lasted from World War I to the 70s of the 20th century. The subject and methodology of science are becoming more closely connected. The representative of this stage is the Russian-American sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, he created the "System of Sociology", which was based on the theory and methodology of measuring social mobility. According to him, society is a real set of interacting people, where the status of the subject depends on his actions in the sectors of social mobility. This provision describes, first of all, the subject of sociology.
At present (at the end of the 20th century, at the beginning of the 21st century, a new understanding of this science, alternative to the classical one, has arisen. According to it, the focus was not on society, but on the subject of society as an active actor. Among the adherents of the approach are A. Turen and P. Bourdieu, the British M. Archer and E. Giddens. Currently, they are faced with questions: whether the classical understanding of the subject is rejected or simply needs to be developed.