Mary Wollstonecraft and Harriet Martineau at the origins of sociology

Abstract

Mary Wollstonecraft and Harriet Martineau still need to be included in the history of sociology, despite their innovative contribution to the field. The fact that they are still kept outside the canon needs to be the subject of future reflection and analyses regarding the dynamics of the social construction/recognition of female genius, which, being such a vast issue, is impossible to deal with here .
Mary Wollstonecraft , like her contemporary J-J Rousseau, can be located with considerable authority within the field of pre-sociology mainly because she was the first person who, in the 1700s, described the social dynamics that prevented the egalitarian education of men and women who were thus prevented from learning how to exercise rational thought and act freely in both time and space. Martineau, who changed the order of epistemological discourse, is often mentioned simply as the translator into English of Auguste Comte’s Course on Positive Philosophy, though she was the first, before Emile Durkheim was even born, to carry out in-depth empirical research, between 1834 and 1837, regarding the implementation of democracy in the United States. During the long sea voyage between Europe and America, she drew up a detailed account of the sociological methodology she would adopt during her stay in the USA.