The Sociology of Chess

Before embarking on a series about Chess and Social Trends, I should know something about sociology, a subject I've managed to avoid for most of my life. Wikipedia's page on Sociology says,

Sociology is the study of social behaviour or society, including its origins, development, organization, networks, and institutions. It is a social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order, disorder, and change.

How about some imagery to go along with that? I searched my file of chess images and came up with a set of related words -- associated, association, social, socialize, society -- of which the most frequent images were similar to the one shown below.

'The Irish Chess Association at Belfast'

This particular image was a half-page engraving from an 1886 issue of the weekly newspaper 'The Illustrated London News'. It shows Burn and Blackburne at a chess table in front of other members of the association. For the next few posts in the series, I'll present other images as I take the time to explore the subject.