Breaking down the question

The statement claims that sociology is pre-eminently — that is, above all else — the study of modern societies. The command word discuss asks you to weigh the claim, presenting both the strong case for it and the qualifications against it, before arriving at a balanced position.

Two things must be established. First, why sociology is so intimately bound to modernity — the discipline was born of the very transformations, the industrial and democratic revolutions, that created modern society. Second, whether this bond is so exclusive that pre-modern or non-modern societies fall outside sociology's reach. At ten marks, you should affirm the historical truth in the statement while resisting its overstatement.

How to approach it

  • Open by locating sociology's origins in the great transformations of nineteenth-century Europe — industrialisation, urbanisation, the French Revolution, the Enlightenment.
  • Show how the founding concerns — order, solidarity, the division of labour, alienation — were responses to the crisis of modern society.
  • Then qualify: sociology also studies tradition, comparative and pre-industrial societies, and continuities between the traditional and the modern.
  • Conclude that the statement captures the discipline's origin and central preoccupation, but not the whole of its scope.

Ground the discussion in the modernity and the emergence of sociology notes.

Model answer

Sociology emerged in the nineteenth century as an intellectual response to the upheavals that produced modern society. The Industrial Revolution dissolved the agrarian order and created factories, cities and a propertyless working class; the French Revolution shattered the old political hierarchy; and the Enlightenment supplied faith that society could be studied scientifically. It is in this sense that the statement rings true — sociology is, at its origin, the self-consciousness of modernity.

The founders confirm this. Auguste Comte, who coined the term, sought a positive science to reorder a society thrown into disorder by revolution. Emile Durkheim asked how solidarity was possible once the division of labour replaced the mechanical bonds of traditional community. Karl Marx analysed capitalism, alienation and class conflict — categories of the modern industrial order. Max Weber traced the rationalisation and bureaucratisation that defined the modern West. Each central concept — anomie, alienation, rationalisation — is a diagnosis of the modern condition.

Yet the claim is overstated if read exclusively. Sociology has never confined itself to modernity. Comparative and historical sociology examines tribal, feudal and pre-industrial societies; Durkheim's Elementary Forms studied totemic religion among Australian aborigines; and social anthropology, sociology's sibling, took pre-modern societies as its province. Studying the modern, moreover, requires a contrast with the traditional — the very concept of modernity is relational.

Furthermore, Anthony Giddens and other contemporary theorists show that sociology continues to reinvent itself around late or reflexive modernity, globalisation and risk, demonstrating that its engagement with the modern is ongoing rather than a fixed historical episode.

The balanced position is this: sociology is pre-eminently — but not exclusively — the study of modern societies. It was born of modernity, its master concepts are calibrated to the modern experience, and its central preoccupation remains the modern world. But its scope extends to tradition, to comparison across epochs, and to the transitions between social types. The statement therefore names the discipline's heartland accurately, provided we do not mistake the heartland for the whole territory.

Examiner's perspective

The examiner rewards a script that takes the word pre-eminently seriously — it invites nuance, not a one-sided endorsement. A strong answer establishes the genuine historical link between sociology and modernity through the founders, then qualifies the exclusivity with comparative and historical sociology.

Naming the twin revolutions and the Enlightenment shows command of the discipline's origins, while the closing distinction between pre-eminently and exclusively signals the balance a discuss question demands. Avoid a mere narration of sociology's history without engaging the claim itself.