Work · Sociology & Social Theory
How to Observe Morals and Manners
One of the first manuals of social research: study a society’s institutions and records first, using what people say only as commentary on them – and measure the society against its own principles.
Introduction
Harriet Martineau, already famous for her popular Illustrations of Political Economy, wrote this methodological book after a two-year journey through the United States (1834–36), which also produced Society in America (1837). It advises travellers how to study a foreign society without prejudice: suspend judgement, and attend to “things” – institutions, records, buildings, popular songs, epitaphs, crime and suicide figures – rather than to conversations with a few individuals. Its chapters on religion, general moral notions, domestic life, the idea of liberty and progress show what such observation should look for. Martineau later translated and condensed Comte’s Positive Philosophy (1853) and is now counted among the founders of sociology.
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