Essential Sociology Seema Nitin Sangwan

The second edition of Essential Sociology now covers Sociology in an even more comprehensive manner. It is a result of extensive feedback by the beloved readers. The book will now cater to the needs of not only UPSC Civil Services aspirants, but NET aspirants and undergraduate students also. The language of the book has been further simplified in this edition. The book is divided into two parts and it covers Indian sociological thought in great detail with a contemporary touch.

The word Sociology has both Latin and Greek origins. The word comes from a Latin word socius meaning companion and the suffix logy meaning the study of has Greek origins. Sociology, in its simplest meaning, is the study of society and the social institutions. Sociology evolved as a nascent discipline with the profound influence of natural sciences.

Darwinian hypothesis had a telling effect on the early sociological postulates. Some British sociologists even viewed human society in a similar revolutionary fusion as that of organic evolucion of the living beings. This also influenced many linear revolutonary theories and perspectives later. Ideology of science, modernism and racional thought was hard to ignore in those times and as a result, instead of being passive students, earlier sociologists also lavishly indulged in grand theoretical speculations. Early sociologists even tried to maintain distance from other social sciences by contending that Sociology alone is a true science of society.

Some claimed that it is the most sophisticated of all sciences and hence, shall arrive and be discovered at the end of all sciences. Social institutions were viewed in terms of their roles and functionalities and driven by some fundamental rules. Counter currenrs within discipline also started to flow at the same time and all these claims were soon to be tested on the anvil of legitimacy.