Lessons on Classical Liberal Sociology

Yasmin Valdez  | 25 de octubre de 2017  | Vistas: 131

As a rational choice sociologist, Charlotta Stern explains her background in the field and the way she is going to discuss classical liberal sociology.

Stern begins introducing three classical liberal sociologists that aren’t as recognized today and presents the results of her research about the amount of information on this topic on the web. She expands on the work of Herbert Spencer, Harriet Martineau, and William Graham Sumner; revealing their ideas, thoughts on society, legislation and more.

Legislation on moral issues, like how to treat employees, tend to have a bunch of unintended consequences and actually turn out not to be that helpful in the end.”

Charlotte shares her opinion on the reason why classical liberal sociologists are neglected and then makes a comparison between Max Weber and liberalism. She explains the hermeneutical tradition connected with Weber's work and reviews some of his books to highlight his thoughts on human conduct, culture, ideas, sociology, individualism, and capitalism. 

If you are free and uncivil, it’s not going to work, so you need for people to be both, free and civil.”

Stern discusses the relevance of classical liberal sociology, how civility is a necessary virtue to sustain liberty and compares it to Adams Smith social distance theory of sympathy individualism and social cohesion. Furthermore, comments on the way to study these ideas and the impact this has on the development of a society. Charlotta concludes giving her perspective on the contributions of classical liberal socialism and the benefits that this has for classical liberalism.

Now watch : Why Does Classical Liberal History Matter?


Conferencista

Sociology professor, Stockholm University