Practice question · Match the pairs
Match each writer to the claim that entered sociology from their work.
- Montesquieu
- Adam Smith
- Rousseau
- Bonald and Maistre
- Inequality is produced by society, not given by nature
- A society stripped of tradition faces a problem of order
- Laws and customs vary systematically, so they can be compared
- Specialisation raises output and makes people dependent on one another
Hints
- Two of these writers were arguing for change and two against it.
- One of them wrote about pins; one about the origin of inequality.
Show the answer
- Montesquieu → Laws and customs vary systematically, so they can be compared
- Adam Smith → Specialisation raises output and makes people dependent on one another
- Rousseau → Inequality is produced by society, not given by nature
- Bonald and Maistre → A society stripped of tradition faces a problem of order
Why
None of the four called himself a sociologist and two would have been appalled by the discipline. What they contributed was a set of premises, comparability, interdependence, the social production of inequality, the fragility of order, which together make a science of society thinkable.
Practise The Birth of a Discipline
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