The scope of sociology refers to the boundaries of its subject matter — what belongs inside the discipline and what is left to economics, political science, history or psychology. Because sociology arrived last among the social sciences and claimed territory the others already occupied, the question was contested from the start, and two answers crystallised into schools.
The two schools
The formalistic school confines sociology to the forms of social relationships, abstracted from their content. Georg Simmel argued that competition, subordination, conflict, division of labour and the like recur across economic, religious and political life; sociology's task is to study these pure forms of sociation, leaving their particular contents to the specialised sciences. Leopold von Wiese, Ferdinand Tönnies, Alfred Vierkandt and Max Weber are usually placed in this camp, Weber for restricting sociology to the interpretive understanding of social action rather than to society entire.
The synthetic school treats sociology as a general science of society that coordinates the findings of the specialised disciplines. Emile Durkheim divided the field into social morphology, social physiology and general sociology; Pitirim Sorokin, L. T. Hobhouse and Karl Mannheim likewise held that social life is an interconnected whole and cannot be understood by any one specialism working alone. Auguste Comte's original conception of sociology as the queen of the sciences belongs to this lineage.
Points of debate
Each position pays a price. The formalistic view secures a distinct method and guards against sociology becoming a residual category, but critics note that forms cannot in fact be separated from contents — competition in a caste-ordered village is not the same relation as competition in a commodity market. The synthetic view captures the interdependence of institutions, yet risks leaving sociology with no boundary of its own and reducing it to an encyclopaedia of the social sciences. Most working sociologists accept a middle position: a distinctive perspective on social relationships, applicable across substantive fields.
For the UPSC answer
Set the two schools against each other with their proponents named, then state the cost of each and settle on the synthesis. Use the scope question to answer the related paper theme of sociology's relation to economics, political science and history — the debate is precisely about where those borders fall.
References & further reading
- Simmel, G. (1908). Sociology: Inquiries into the Construction of Social Forms. Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot.
- Sorokin, P. A. (1928). Contemporary Sociological Theories. New York: Harper.
- Durkheim, E. (1895). The Rules of Sociological Method. New York: Free Press.