Grundfragen der Soziologie

A series of analytic essays defines the scope and methods of sociology, debating whether society is merely an abstraction or a legitimate object of investigation and clarifying how individual phenomena are grouped into collective units. The text distinguishes formal inquiries into patterns of interaction and sociability from philosophical and historical approaches, examines the interplay between social and individual levels, and uses conceptual examples and analogies to show how social types and relations can be systematically described and interpreted.