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A Sociology Exhibit

Organizing Relationships

William the Conqueror (by Edward A. Freeman)
Social Physics: From the Positive Philos... (by Auguste Comte)
Confidences : Talks with a Young Girl Co... (by Edith Belle Lowry)
The Sexual Question : A Scientific, Psyc... (by Auguste Forel)
Theories of society; foundations of mode... (by Parsons, Talcott)
Catastrophe and Social Change, Based Upo... (by Prince, Samuel Henry)
The Laws of Imitation (by Tarde, Gabriel)
Essays in Sociological Theory (by Parsons, Talcott)
Folkways (by Sumner, William Graham)
Adolphe Quetelet as Statistician (by Hankins, Frank Hamilton)
A History of Social Thought (by Emory Stephen Bogardus)
Sex: Avoided Subjects Discussed in Plain... (by Henry Stanton)
Some Ksatriya Tribes of Ancient India (by Bimala Charan Law)
Women and Economics: A Study of the Econ... (by Charlotte Perkins Gilman)
Woman : Her Charm and Power (by Downes, Robert P.)

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

William the Conqueror (by Edward A. Freeman)
Social Physics: From the Positive Philos... (by Auguste Comte)
Confidences : Talks with a Young Girl Co... (by Edith Belle Lowry)
The Sexual Question : A Scientific, Psyc... (by Auguste Forel)
Theories of society; foundations of mode... (by Parsons, Talcott)
Catastrophe and Social Change, Based Upo... (by Prince, Samuel Henry)
The Laws of Imitation (by Tarde, Gabriel)
Essays in Sociological Theory (by Parsons, Talcott)
Folkways (by Sumner, William Graham)
Adolphe Quetelet as Statistician (by Hankins, Frank Hamilton)
A History of Social Thought (by Emory Stephen Bogardus)
Sex: Avoided Subjects Discussed in Plain... (by Henry Stanton)
Some Ksatriya Tribes of Ancient India (by Bimala Charan Law)
Women and Economics: A Study of the Econ... (by Charlotte Perkins Gilman)
Woman : Her Charm and Power (by Downes, Robert P.)

Top 100 books on Psychology

The Crowd : A Study of the Popular Mind (by Gustave Le Bon)
Initiative Psychic Energy (by Hilton, Warren)
Applied Psychology : A Series of Twelve ... (by Warren Hilton)
Mind and Motion and Monism (by Romanes, George John)
Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory (by Freud, Sigmund)
Ten Days in a Madhouse (by Bly, Nellie)
Totem and Taboo (by Freud, Sigmund)
Crime and Punishment (by Dostoevsky, Fyodor)
The Psychology of Management: The Functi... (by Lillian Moller Gilbreth)
Memories Dreams Reflections (by C. G. Jung)
The Foundations of Personality (by Myerson, Abraham)
The Achievements of Luther Trant (by Balmer, Edwin)
Malignant Self Love (by Vaknin, Sam)
A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis (by Freud, Sigmund)
The Sexual Life of the Child (by Moll, Albert)

Top 100 books on Economics

Profits, Wages, and Prices (by David Friday)
Communist Manifesto (by Marx, Karl)
The Art of War (by Tzu, Sun)
The People of the Abyss (by Jack London)
Two Treatises of Government (by Locke, John)
A synopsis of the first three books of J... (by Mill, John Stuart)
The Collapse of Capitalism (by Cahn, Herman)
The Morality of Capitalism
Children of the Slaves (by Graham, Stephen)
The Theory of the Leisure Class (by Veblen, Thorstein)
Common Sense (by Paine, Thomas)
Walden (by Thoreau, Henry David)
Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusio... (by Mackay, Charles)
The History of the Russian Revolution to... (by Trotsky, Leon)
Common Sense (by Paine, Thomas)

Top 100 books on Government

Discourse on Inequality (by Rousseau, Jean Jacques)
The Magna Carta (by Hutchinson, Joshua)
The Declaration of Independence and Lett... (by Jefferson, Thomas)
The Prince (by Machiavelli, Niccolò)
Britton (by Francis Morgan Nichols)
The Petition of Right (by Relf, Frances Helen)
Ethica (by Baruch Spinoza, Benedictus De Spinoza, Johannes Va...)
A Plea for Religious Liberty and the Rig... (by George Ticknor Curtis)
Communist Manifesto, The (by Marx, Karl)
Das Kapital (by Karl Marx)
Excerpts from Frame of Government of Pen... (by Penn, William)
The Elements of Law Natural and Politic (by Hobbes, Thomas)
Declaration of Taking up Arms (by Second Continental Congress)
Vindication of the Rights of Woman (by Wollstonecraft, Mary)
On Liberty (by Mill, J. S.)

Top 100 books on Law

Constitution and Laws of the Cherokee Na... (by Cherokee Nation, Oklahoma)
Sacred Text : Common Sense, Volume I (by Paine, Thomas)
Constitution of the New-England Anti-Sla... (by Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society)
The Development of the Associative Princ... (by Christopher Barker)
The Relations between the Laws of Babylo... (by Johns, Claude Hermann Walter)
Amendments to the United States Constitu... (by United States, Founding Fathers of the)
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (by John Locke)
The English Constitution (by Sir Frederick Pollock)
Bleak House (by Dickens, Charles)
The Idea of a League of Nations; Prolego... (by League of Nations Union)
Two Centuries' Growth of American Law, 1... (by Yale Law School)
The Nature of the Judicial Process (by Benjamin N. Cardozo)
The Wealth of Nations (by Adam Smith)
Bleak House (by Dickens, Charles)
The French Civil Code (As Amended up to ... (by Eric Blackwood Wright, France)

Top 100 books on Politics

The Jungle (by Sinclair, Upton)
The Law (by Bastiat, Frédéric)
On Liberty (by Mill, John Stuart)
The Federalist Papers (by Hamilton, Alexander)
Chronological Tables of the Chinese Dyna... (by E. R. Lyman, Tso-Ting Wang, Theodore Wong)
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (by Franklin, Benjamin)
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonapar... (by Marx, Karl)
Areopagitica (by John Milton)
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of C... (by Weber, Max)
Common Sense (by Paine, Thomas)
Ten Days that Shook the World (by Reed, John)
Wealth of Nations, Book 1, The (by Smith, Adam)
Utopia (by More, Thomas)
Proposed Roads to Freedom : Socialism, A... (by Russell, Bertrand)
The Wealth of Nations (by Adam Smith)

Top 100 books on Anthropology

First Annual Report of the Bureau of Eth... (by Powell, J. W.)
Modern Mythology (by Lang, Andrew)
The Great Rift Valley : Being the Narrat... (by Gregory, John Walter)
The Journal of the Royal Anthropological... (by Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ire...)
Ancient Art and Ritual (by Jane Ellen Harrison)
Argonauts of the Western Pacific (by Malinowski, Bronislaw)
Sex and Repression in Savage Society (by Malinowski, Bronislaw)
African Systems of Kinship and Marriage (by Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. (Alfred Reginald))
The Wild Tribes of Davao District, Minda... (by Cole, Fay Cooper)
Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of... (by Morgan, Lewis Henry)
The Human Species (by Armand De Quatrefages De Bréau)
Criminal Man, According to the Classific... (by Lombroso-Ferrero, Gina)
The Scope of Social Anthropology; A Lect... (by Frazer, James George, Sir)
International Catalogue of Scientific Li... (by Royal Society, Great Britain)
The Anthropological Treatises of Johann ... (by Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich)

Top 100 books on Mathematics

Vorlesungen über Zahlentheorie (by Peter Gustav Lejeune-Dirichlet)
Symbolic Logic and Its Applications (by John Venn)
The Collected Mathematical Papers of Art... (by Cayley, Arthur)
Elements of Algebra (by Euler, Leonhard)
The Sand-reckoner of Archimedes, Score A... (by Heath, Thomas)
The Earliest Arithmetics in English (by Alexander, De Villa Dei)
Symbolic logic (by Carroll, Lewis)
Theory of the Motion of the Heavenly Bod... (by Carl Friedrich Gauss)
The Elements of Euclid: The Errors by Wh... (by Euclid)
The Doctrine of Chances : Or, A Method o... (by Abraham De Moivre)
The Golden Verses of Pythagoras (by Fabre Dolivet, Antoine)
The Elements of the Theory of Algebraic ... (by Reid, Legh Wilber)
The Aryabhatiya; With the Commentary Bha... (by Aryabhata)
Harmonies of the World, Score Astro How (by Kepler, Johannes)
A Treatise of Celestial Mechanics : Pt. ... Volume Pt. 1-2 (by Laplace, Pierre Simon, Marquis De)

Top 100 books on Economics

Profits, Wages, and Prices (by David Friday)
Communist Manifesto (by Marx, Karl)
The Art of War (by Tzu, Sun)
The People of the Abyss (by Jack London)
Two Treatises of Government (by Locke, John)
A synopsis of the first three books of J... (by Mill, John Stuart)
The Collapse of Capitalism (by Cahn, Herman)
The Morality of Capitalism
Children of the Slaves (by Graham, Stephen)
The Theory of the Leisure Class (by Veblen, Thorstein)
Common Sense (by Paine, Thomas)
Walden (by Thoreau, Henry David)
Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusio... (by Mackay, Charles)
The History of the Russian Revolution to... (by Trotsky, Leon)
Common Sense (by Paine, Thomas)