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First, the objects differ. Sociology studies society, and culturology, for example, studies culture. And although both may exist in the past, without a specific carrier in the present, traditionally historians are engaged in the study of past societies, but culturologists are engaged in the study of cultures. From this, we conclude that the field of research of sociologists is significantly narrower and limited to modern societies.
Secondly, as an independent discipline, cultural studies was formed about a century later than sociology and is still in the process of being formed, so there are certain disagreements among its adherents about what they study.
Third, the methodology is very different. Cultural studies tends to use descriptive methods, while sociology tends to use calculative methods. In simple terms, cultural studies is like the history of art/literature/philosophy, and sociology is like a population census or cliometry.
Fourth, the history of these disciplines is very different. Sociology was born in the 19th century, the age of social utopias, including those based on scientific grounds like Marxism. For them, this new subject, which was formed at the intersection of history, mathematics and philosophy, was required. In the early USSR, say, before 1934, pure sociology was taught instead of history. Cultural studies, on the other hand, is a phenomenon of the second half of the twentieth century, which has already survived two terrible world wars, which proved the fallacy of unconditional faith in progress, the meaning of history, and so on. Cultural studies is a child of postmodernism, with its dislike of big narratives, generalizations, and the ascension of the idea of equality of all ideas to a pedestal.
This does not mean that their research objects are fundamentally different, on the contrary, they can often coincide. But they will be studied from completely different positions. As an example, I will cite two works on the end of the Roman Empire: cultural studies-J.-M. Wallace-Hedrill ” The Barbarian West “(Moscow, 2002), sociology — A. R. Korsunsky, Gunter R. “The Decline and demise of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of the German Kingdoms” (Moscow, 1984). The first one is written in a lively language and gives the layman a fascinating picture of the history of the IV-IX centuries. however, upon closer examination, it is not at all obvious from what the author's conclusion follows that ” early medieval people could live like barbarians, but at the same time consider themselves Romans.” The second one meticulously breaks down the societies of the early barbarian kingdoms into components and presents the history of the development of the relationships of their components, which ultimately led (from the authors ' point of view) to the formation of feudalism; but at the same time it is very dry (if not boring) and replete with science-intensive terms and figures.
As outstanding representatives of their respective disciplines, I suggest Mikhail Sokolov (sociology) postnauka.ru and Carlo Ginzburg (cultural studies) youtube.com