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Sociology
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Sociology is the study of social behaviour or society, including its origins, development, organisation, networks, and institutions. It is a science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order, disorder. Many sociologists aim to research that may be applied directly to social policy and welfare. Subject matter ranges from the level of individual agency and interaction to the macro level of systems. The traditional focuses of sociology include social stratification, social class, social mobility, religion, secularization, law, sexuality, the range of social scientific methods has also expanded. Social researchers draw upon a variety of qualitative and quantitative techniques, the linguistic and cultural turns of the mid-twentieth century led to increasingly interpretative, hermeneutic, and philosophic approaches towards the analysis of society. There is often a great deal of crossover between social research, market research, and other statistical fields, Sociology is distinguished from various general social studies courses, which bear little relation to sociological theory or to social-science research-methodology. The US National Science Foundation classifies sociology as a STEM field, Sociological reasoning pre-dates the foundation of the discipline. Social analysis has origins in the stock of Western knowledge and philosophy. The origin of the survey, i. e, there is evidence of early sociology in medieval Arab writings. The word sociology is derived from both Latin and Greek origins, the Latin word, socius, companion, the suffix -logy, the study of from Greek -λογία from λόγος, lógos, word, knowledge. It was first coined in 1780 by the French essayist Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès in an unpublished manuscript, Sociology was later defined independently by the French philosopher of science, Auguste Comte, in 1838. Comte used this term to describe a new way of looking at society, Comte had earlier used the term social physics, but that had subsequently been appropriated by others, most notably the Belgian statistician Adolphe Quetelet. Comte endeavoured to unify history, psychology and economics through the understanding of the social realm. Comte believed a positivist stage would mark the final era, after conjectural theological and metaphysical phases, Comte gave a powerful impetus to the development of sociology, an impetus which bore fruit in the later decades of the nineteenth century. To say this is not to claim that French sociologists such as Durkheim were devoted disciples of the high priest of positivism. To be sure, beginnings can be traced back well beyond Montesquieu, for example, Marx rejected Comtean positivism but in attempting to develop a science of society nevertheless came to be recognized as a founder of sociology as the word gained wider meaning. For Isaiah Berlin, Marx may be regarded as the father of modern sociology
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History of sociology
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Sociology as a scholarly discipline emerged primarily out of enlightenment thought, shortly after the French Revolution, as a positivist science of society. Its genesis owed to various key movements in the philosophy of science, Social analysis in a broader sense, however, has origins in the common stock of philosophy and necessarily pre-dates the field. Modern academic sociology arose as a reaction to modernity, capitalism, urbanization, rationalization, secularization, colonization, an emphasis on the concept of modernity, rather than the Enlightenment, often distinguishes sociological discourse from that of classical political philosophy. Various quantitative social research techniques have become common tools for governments, businesses and organizations, divorced from theoretical explanations of social dynamics, this has given social research a degree of autonomy from the discipline of sociology. Similarly, social science has come to be appropriated as a term to refer to various disciplines which study humans, interaction. Sociological reasoning may be traced back at least as far as the ancient Greeks, proto-sociological observations are to be found in the founding texts of Western philosophy, as well as in the non-European thought of figures such as Confucius. The characteristic trends in the thinking of the ancient Greeks can be traced back to their social environment. Because there was rarely any extensive or highly centralized political organization within states this allowed the tribal spirit of localism and provincialism to have free play and this tribal spirit of localism and provincialism pervaded most of the Greek thinking upon social phenomena. The origin of the survey can be traced back to the Domesday Book ordered by king William I in 1086, there is evidence of early Muslim sociology from the 14th century. He is thus considered by some to be the forerunner of sociology, concerning the discipline of sociology, he conceived a dynamic theory of history that involved conceptualizations of social conflict and social change. He developed the dichotomy of sedentary life versus nomadic life as well as the concept of a generation, following a contemporary Arab scholar, Sati al-Husri, the Muqaddimah may be read as a sociological work, six books of general sociology. Topics dealt with in this work include politics, urban life, economics, the work is based around Ibn Khalduns central concept of asabiyyah, which has been translated as social cohesion, group solidarity, or tribalism. This social cohesion arises spontaneously in tribes and other kinship groups. The term was first coined by the French essayist Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, from the Latin, socius, companion, and the suffix -ology, in 1838, the French-thinker Auguste Comte ultimately gave sociology the definition that it holds today. Comte had earlier expressed his work as physics, but that term had been appropriated by others, most notably a Belgian statistician. He argued that scientists could distract groups from war and strife, in turn, this would bring multiple cultures and societies together and prevent conflict. Saint-Simon took the idea that everyone had encouraged from the Enlightenment, which was the belief in science, saint-Simons main idea was that industrialism would create a new launch in history. He saw that people had been seeing progress as an approach for science, Society was making a crucial change at the time since it was growing out of a declining feudalism
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Outline of sociology
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Sociology can be described as all of the following, The study of society. Academic discipline – body of knowledge given to - or received by - a disciple, a branch or sphere of knowledge, or field of study, field of science – widely recognized category of specialized expertise within science, and typically embodies its own terminology and nomenclature. Such a field will usually be represented by one or more scientific journals, there are many sociology-related scientific journals. Social science – field of scholarship that explores aspects of human society. He is thus considered by some to be the forerunner of sociology
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Sociological theory
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Sociological theories are statements of how and why particular facts about the social world are related. They range in scope from concise descriptions of a social process to paradigms for analysis. Some sociological theories explain aspects of the world and enable prediction about future events. Kenneth Allan proposed the distinction between theory and social theory. In Allans usage, sociological theory consists of abstract and testable propositions about society and it often heavily relies on the scientific method, which aims for objectivity, and attempts to avoid passing value judgments. In contrast, social theory, according to Allan, focuses on commentary, Social theory is often closer to Continental philosophy, thus, it is less concerned with objectivity and derivation of testable propositions, and more likely to pass normative judgments. Sociological theory is created only by sociologists, while social theory can frequently come from other disciplines. Prominent social theorists include, Jürgen Habermas, Anthony Giddens, Michel Foucault, Dorothy Smith, Alfred Schütz, Jeffrey Alexander, the field of sociology itself—and sociological theory by extension—is relatively new. Both date back to the 18th and 19th centuries, the drastic social changes of that period, such as industrialization, urbanization, and the rise of democratic states caused particularly Western thinkers to become aware of society. The oldest sociological theories deal with broad historical processes relating to these changes, since then, sociological theories have come to encompass most aspects of society, including communities, organizations and relationships. Overall, there is a consensus regarding the central theoretical questions. Sociological theory attempts to answer the three questions, What is action. In the myriad attempts to answer questions, three predominately theoretical problems emerge. These problems are largely inherited from the classical theoretical traditions, the first deals with knowledge, the second with agency, and the last with time. The problem of subjectivity and objectivity can be divided into a concern over the possibilities of social actions. In the former, the subjective is often equated with the individual, the objective is often considered any public or external action or outcome, on up to society writ large. A primary question for social theorists, is how knowledge reproduces along the chain of subjective-objective-subjective, while, historically, qualitative methods have attempted to tease out subjective interpretations, quantitative survey methods also attempt to capture individual subjectivities. Also, some qualitative methods take an approach to objective description in situ
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Structural functionalism
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Structural functionalism, or simply functionalism, is a framework for building theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability. This approach looks at society through an orientation, which is a broad focus on the social structures that shape society as a whole. This approach looks at both social structure and social functions, Functionalism addresses society as a whole in terms of the function of its constituent elements, namely norms, customs, traditions, and institutions. A common analogy, popularized by Herbert Spencer, presents these parts of society as organs that work toward the proper functioning of the body as a whole. For Talcott Parsons, structural-functionalism came to describe a stage in the methodological development of social science. Biology has been taken to provide a guide to conceptualizing the structure, Functionalism strongly emphasises the pre-eminence of the social world over its individual parts. Functionalism also has a basis in the work of theorists such as Marcel Mauss, Bronisław Malinowski. It is in Radcliffe-Browns specific usage that the prefix structural emerged, Radcliffe-Brown proposed that most stateless, primitive societies, lacking strong centralized institutions, are based on an association of corporate-descent groups. Structural functionalism also took on Malinowskis argument that the building block of society is the nuclear family. Émile Durkheim was concerned with the question of how certain societies maintain internal stability and he proposed that such societies tend to be segmented, with equivalent parts held together by shared values, common symbols or, as his nephew Marcel Mauss held, systems of exchanges. Durkheim used the mechanical solidarity to refer to these types of social bonds, based on common sentiments & shared moral values. In modern, complex societies, members perform very different tasks and these views were upheld by Durkheim, who, following Comte, believed that society constitutes a separate level of reality, distinct from both biological and inorganic matter. Explanations of social phenomena had therefore to be constructed within this level, the central concern of structural functionalism is a continuation of the Durkheimian task of explaining the apparent stability and internal cohesion needed by societies to endure over time. All social and cultural phenomena are seen as functional in the sense of working together. They are primarily analyzed in terms of this function, the individual is significant not in and of himself, but rather in terms of his status, his position in patterns of social relations, and the behaviours associated with his status. Therefore, the structure is the network of statuses connected by associated roles. It is simplistic to equate the perspective directly with political conservatism, the tendency to emphasize cohesive systems, however, leads functionalist theories to be contrasted with conflict theories which instead emphasize social problems and inequalities. Auguste Comte, the Father of Positivism, pointed out the need to keep society unified as many traditions were diminishing and he was the first person to coin the term sociology
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Conflict theories
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Conflict theories draw attention to power differentials, such as class conflict, and generally contrast historically dominant ideologies. It is therefore a macro level analysis of society, Karl Marx is the father of the social conflict theory, which is a component of the four paradigms of sociology. Certain conflict theories set out to highlight the ideological aspects inherent in traditional thought, of the classical founders of social science, conflict theory is most commonly associated with Karl Marx. Based on a dialectical materialist account of history, Marxism posited that capitalism, like previous socioeconomic systems, Marx ushered in radical change, advocating proletarian revolution and freedom from the ruling classes. At the same time, Karl Marx was aware that most of the living in capitalist societies did not see how the system shaped the entire operation of society. Marx rejected this type of thinking and termed it false consciousness, in general, Marx wanted the proletarians to rise up against the capitalists and overthrow the capitalist system. Two early conflict theorists were the Polish-Austrian sociologist and political theorist Ludwig Gumplowicz, Gumplowicz, in Grundriss der Soziologie, describes how civilization has been shaped by conflict between cultures and ethnic groups. Gumplowicz theorized that large complex human societies evolved from the war, the winner of a war would enslave the losers, eventually a complex caste system develops. Horowitz says that Gumplowicz understood conflict in all its forms, class conflict, race conflict and ethnic conflict, Ward directly attacked and attempted to systematically refute the elite business classs laissez-faire philosophy as espoused by the hugely popular social philosopher Herbert Spencer. Wards Dynamic Sociology was a thesis on how to reduce conflict and competition in society. At the most basic level Ward saw human nature itself to be deeply conflicted between self-aggrandizement and altruism, between emotion and intellect, and between male and female. These conflicts would be reflected in society and Ward assumed there had been a perpetual. Ward was more optimistic than Marx and Gumplowicz and believed that it was possible to build on, durkheim saw society as a functioning organism. Durkheim saw crime as a factor in health, an integral part of all healthy societies. The collective conscience defines certain acts as criminal, crime thus plays a role in the evolution of morality and law, implies not only that the way remains open to necessary changes but that in certain cases it directly prepares these changes. Webers approach to conflict is contrasted with that of Marx, C. Wright Mills has been called the founder of modern conflict theory. In Millss view, social structures are created through conflict between people with differing interests and resources, individuals and resources, in turn, are influenced by these structures and by the unequal distribution of power and resources in the society. The power elite of American society, had emerged from the fusion of the elite, the Pentagon
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Symbolic interactionism
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Symbolic interactionism is a sociological perspective which developed around the middle of the twentieth century and that continues to be influential in some areas of the discipline. It is particularly important in microsociology and social psychology, Symbolic interactionism is derived from the American philosophy of pragmatism and particularly from the work of George Herbert Mead. Sociologists working in this tradition have researched a wide range of topics using a variety of research methods, however, the majority of interactionist research uses qualitative research techniques, like participant observation, to study aspects of social interaction and/or individual selves. Symbolic interaction was conceived by George Herbert Mead and Charles Horton Cooley, Meads influence was said to be so powerful that sociologists regard him as the one true founder of the symbolic interactionism tradition. Although Mead taught in a department, he is best known by sociologists as the teacher who trained a generation of the best minds in their field. Strangely, he never set forth his ideas in a book or systematic treatise. After his death in 1931, his students pulled together class notes and conversations with their mentor and published Mind, Self, Herbert Blumer was a social constructionist, and was influenced by Dewey, as such, this theory is very phenomenologically based. He believed that the Most human and humanizing activity that people engage in is talking to each other, two other theorists who have influenced Symbolic interaction theory are Yrjö Engeström and David Middleton. Other scholars credited for their contribution to the theory are Thomas, Park, James, Horton Cooley, Znaniecki, Baldwin, Redfield, the term symbolic interactionism has come into use as a label for a relatively distinctive approach to the study of human life and human conduct. This viewpoint sees people as active in shaping their world, rather than as entities who are acted upon by society, with symbolic interactionism, reality is seen as social, developed interaction with others. Most symbolic interactionists believe a physical reality does indeed exist by an individuals social definitions, and this means that humans exist not in the physical space composed of realities, but in the world composed only of objects. According to Blumer, the objects can be divided into three types, physical objects, social objects, and abstract objects, both individuals and society cannot be separated far from each other for two reasons. One, being that they are created through social interaction, and two, one cannot be understood without the other. Herbert Blumer set out three basic premises of the perspective, Humans act toward things on the basis of the meanings they ascribe to those things. The meaning of things is derived from, or arises out of, the social interaction that one has with others. These meanings are handled in, and modified through, a process used by the person in dealing with the things he/she encounters. The first premise includes everything that a human being may note in their world, including objects, actions. Essentially, individuals behave towards objects and others based on the meanings that the individual has already given these items
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Quantitative research
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In natural sciences and social sciences, quantitative research is the systematic empirical investigation of observable phenomena via statistical, mathematical or computational techniques. The objective of quantitative research is to develop and employ mathematical models, the process of measurement is central to quantitative research because it provides the fundamental connection between empirical observation and mathematical expression of quantitative relationships. Quantitative data is any data that is in numerical form such as statistics, percentages, the researcher analyzes the data with the help of statistics. The researcher is hoping the numbers will yield a result that can be generalized to some larger population. Qualitative research, on the hand, asks broad questions. The researcher looks for themes and describes the information in themes, research in mathematical sciences such as physics is also quantitative by definition, though this use of the term differs in context. In the social sciences, the term relates to empirical methods, qualitative research produces information only on the particular cases studied, and any more general conclusions are only hypotheses. Quantitative methods can be used to verify which of such hypotheses are true, a comprehensive analysis of 1274 articles published in the top two American sociology journals between 1935 and 2005 found that roughly two thirds of these articles used quantitative methods. Although a distinction is drawn between qualitative and quantitative aspects of scientific investigation, it has been argued that the two go hand in hand. For example, based on analysis of the history of science, qualitative research is often used to gain a general sense of phenomena and to form theories that can be tested using further quantitative research. For instance, in the social sciences qualitative research methods are used to gain better understanding of such things as intentionality. Positivism emphasized the use of the method through observation to empirically test hypotheses explaining and predicting what, where, why, how. Positivist scholars like Comte believed only scientific methods rather than previous spiritual explanations for human behavior could advance, statistical methods are used extensively within fields such as economics, social sciences and biology. Quantitative research using statistical methods starts with the collection of data, usually a big sample of data is collected – this would require verification, validation and recording before the analysis can take place. Software packages such as SPSS and R are typically used for this purpose, causal relationships are studied by manipulating factors thought to influence the phenomena of interest while controlling other variables relevant to the experimental outcomes. Quantitatively based opinion surveys are used in the media, with statistics such as the proportion of respondents in favor of a position commonly reported. In opinion surveys, respondents are asked a set of structured questions, in the field of climate science, researchers compile and compare statistics such as temperature or atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. Empirical relationships and associations are also studied by using some form of general linear model, non-linear model
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Qualitative research
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Qualitative research is a broad methodological approach that encompasses many research methods. Qualitative methods examine the why and how of decision making, not just what, where, when, or who, Qualitative research is popular among political science, social work, and special education and education searchers. In the conventional view of statisticians, qualitative methods produce information only on the cases studied. Quantitative methods can then be used to seek support for such research hypotheses. To help navigate the landscape of qualitative research, one can further think of qualitative inquiry in terms of means. In the early 1900s, some researchers rejected positivism, the idea that there is an objective world which we can gather data from. Most theoretical constructs involve a process of analysis and understanding. In the 1970s and 1980s, the ubiquity of computers aided in qualitative analyses, several journals with a qualitative focus emerged. In the late 1980s, questions of identity emerged, including issues of race, class, gender, also, during this time, researchers began to use mixed-method approaches, indicating a shift in thinking of qualitative and quantitative methods as intrinsically incompatible. However, this history is not apolitical, as this has ushered in a politics of evidence and what can count as scientific research in scholarship, Qualitative methods are used in various methodological approaches, such as action research which has sociological basis, or actor-network theory. The most common used to generate data in qualitative research is an interview which may be structured, semi-structured or unstructured. Other ways to generate data include group discussions or focus groups, observations, reflective field notes, texts, pictures, to analyse qualitative data, the researcher seeks meaning from all of the data that is available. The data may be categorized and sorted into patterns as the basis for organizing and reporting the study findings. The ways of participating and observing can vary widely from setting to setting as exemplified by Helen Schwartzmans primer on Ethnography in Organizations, or Anne Copeland and Kathleen Whites Studying Families. Participant observation is a strategy of learning, not a single method of observing. And has been described as a continuum of between participation and observation, in participant observation researchers typically become members of a culture, group, or setting, and adopt roles to conform to that setting. In doing so, the aim is for the researcher to gain an insight into the cultures practices, motivations. It is argued that the ability to understand the experiences of the culture may be inhibited if they observe without participating
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Historical sociology
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Historical sociology is a branch of sociology focusing on how societies develop through history. It looks at how social structures that many regard as natural are in fact shaped by social processes. The structure in turn shapes institutions and organizations, which affect the society - resulting in phenomena ranging from gender bias, contemporary historical sociology is primarily concerned with how the state has developed since the Middle Ages, analyzing relations between states, classes, economic and political systems. As time has passed, history and sociology have developed two different specific academic disciplines. Historical data was used and is used today in mainly three ways. The first one is, Examining a theory through a Parallel investigation, to correspond with the natural-science conceptions of laws, and to look at, or apply various historical material where you gather your resources in order to prove the theory that is applied. Analyzed by their specific, or what makes them in unique quality of a composition, for interpretive sociologists it is very common for them to use the Verstehen tradition. And lastly, the third way sociologists typically relate is by taking a look at the causalities from a point of view. However, sociologist James Mahoney has a different definition of path dependence and his theory suggests that process, sequence, and temporality have a valid reason for affecting path dependence and the meaning of past historical events. There are three path-dependent analyses with an explanation to how each theory works, James Mahoney revisited the debate over general theory in historical sociology. General theories are defined as postulates about causal agents and causal mechanisms that are linked to empirical analysis through bridging assumptions and these theories can contribute to substantive knowledge by helping analysts derive new hypotheses, integrate existing findings, and explain historical outcomes. A key conclusion that emerges is that scholars must evaluate both the merits of general theory and the individual merits of specific general theories. Giovanni Arrighi Randall Collins Emile Durkheim Norbert Elias Michel Foucault John A.2005, ISBN 0-19-927118-6, p. 276–278 Charles Tilly, Historical Sociology, in Scott G. McNall & Gary N. Howe, eds. Greenwich, Connecticut, JAI Press, online Charles Tilly, Historical Sociology, in International Encyclopedia of the Behavioral and Social Sciences Amsterdam, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society,2010. George Steinmetz, The Historical Sociology of Historical Sociology, Germany, online George Steinmetz, The Relations between Sociology and History in the United States, The Current State of Affairs, Journal of Historical Sociology 20, 1-2, 1-12. David Baronov, The Dialectics of Inquiry Across the Historical Social Sciences, scientific Prediction in Historical Sociology, Ibn Khaldun meets Al Saud
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Comparative historical research
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Generally, it involves comparisons of social processes across times and places. While the disciplines of history and sociology have always been connected and this form of research may use any of several theoretical orientations. It is distinguished by the types of questions it asks, not the theoretical framework it employs, some commentators have identified three waves of historical comparative research. The first wave of historical comparative research concerned how societies came to be modern, i. e. based on individual and rational action, with exact definitions varying widely. Some of the researchers in this mode were Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber. The second wave reacted to a perceived ahistorical body of theory and sought to show how social systems were not static, notable authors of this wave include Barrington Moore, Jr. Theda Skocpol, Charles Tilly, Michael Mann, and Mark Gould. Some have placed the Annales school and Pierre Bourdieu in this general group, the current wave of historical comparative research sociology is often but not exclusively post-structural in its theoretical orientation. Influential current authors include Julia Adams, Anne Laura Stoler, Philip Gorski, studies of comparative nature have taken place in recent years, comparing communities and minorities and social groups. His comparative study gave a clearer picture on the status of the minorities and their relationships with the ruling elites in. His PhD dissertation and the book upon which it was based have been spread and translated into the local languages in Kurdistan. There are four major methods that use to collect historical data. These are archival data, secondary sources, running records, the archival data, or primary sources, are typically the resources that researchers rely most heavily on. Archival data includes official documents and other items that would be found in archives, museums, secondary sources are the works of other historians who have written history. Running records are ongoing series of statistical or other sorts of data, such as data, ships registries, property deeds. Finally recollections include sources such as autobiographies, memoirs or diaries, there are four stages, as discussed by Schutt, to systematic qualitative comparative historical studies, develop the premise of the investigation, identifying events, concepts, etc. Historical data is a set of data to work with due to multiple factors. In this way the data can be corrupt/skewed, Historical data regardless or whether it may or may not be biased is also vulnerable to time. Hence, data is incomplete and can lead social scientists to many barriers in their research
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Mathematical sociology
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Mathematical sociology is the area of sociology that uses mathematics to construct social theories. Mathematical sociology aims to take sociological theory, which is strong in content but weak from a formal point of view. The benefits of this include increased clarity and the ability to use mathematics to derive implications of a theory that cannot be arrived at intuitively. In mathematical sociology, the style is encapsulated in the phrase constructing a mathematical model. This means making specified assumptions about social phenomenon, expressing them in formal mathematics. It also means deducing properties of the model and comparing these with relevant empirical data, Social network analysis is the best-known contribution of this subfield to sociology as a whole and to the scientific community at large. The models typically used in mathematical sociology allow sociologists to understand how predictable local interactions are, moreover, acquaintanceship is a positive tie, but what about negative ties such as animosity among persons. A signed graph is called balanced if the product of the signs of all relations in every cycle is positive and this effort led to Hararys Structure Theorem, which says that if a network of interrelated positive and negative ties is balanced, e. g. The imagery here is of a system that splits into two cliques. There is, however, a case where one of the two subnetworks is empty, which might occur in very small networks. In another model, ties have relative strengths, acquaintanceship can be viewed as a weak tie and friendship is represented as a strong tie. Like its uniform cousin discussed above, there is a concept of closure, a graph satisfies strong triadic closure If A is strongly connected to B, and B is strongly connected to C, then A and C must have a tie. In these two developments we have mathematical models bearing upon the analysis of structure, other early influential developments in mathematical sociology pertained to process. A formal study of the led to theorems about the dynamics. This suggests deriving the equations from assumptions about the chances of an individual changing state in an interval of time. This argument provided impetus for the emergence of a deal of effort to link rational choice thinking to more traditional sociological concerns involving social structures. Meanwhile, structural analysis of the type indicated earlier received an extension to social networks based on institutionalized social relations. The linkage of mathematics and sociology here involved abstract algebra, in particular and this, in turn, led to a focus on a data-analytical version of homomorphic reduction of a complex social network
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Computational sociology
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Computational sociology is a branch of sociology that uses computationally intensive methods to analyze and model social phenomena. It involves the understanding of social agents, the interaction among these agents, in relevant literature, computational sociology is often related to the study of social complexity. Social complexity concepts such as systems, non-linear interconnection among macro and micro process. A practical and well-known example is the construction of a model in the form of an artificial society. However, these models did not permit individuals to interact or adapt and were not intended for basic theoretical research. This cellular automata paradigm gave rise to a wave of social simulation emphasizing agent-based modeling. Like micro-simulations, these models emphasized bottom-up designs but adopted four key assumptions that diverged from microsimulation, autonomy, interdependency, simple rules, agent-based models are less concerned with predictive accuracy and instead emphasize theoretical development. The automatic parsing of textual corpora has enabled the extraction of actors and their networks on a vast scale. Content analysis has been a part of social sciences and media studies for a long time. The automation of content analysis has allowed a big data revolution to take place in field, with studies in social media. Gender bias, readability, content similarity, reader preferences, in 2008, Yukihiko Yoshida did a study called Leni Riefenstahl and German expressionism, research in Visual Cultural Studies using the trans-disciplinary semantic spaces of specialized dictionaries. The analysis of vast quantities of historical newspaper content has been pioneered by Dzogang et al. which showed how periodic structures can be discovered in historical newspapers. A similar analysis was performed on social media, again revealing strongly periodic structures, the most relevant journal of the discipline is the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation. of Michigan, Minor in Complex Systems Systems Sciences Programs List, Portland State. List of other related programs. Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, Center for Complex Systems Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA. Center for Social Complexity, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA. Center of the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, human Complex Systems, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA. Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University, Boston, MA, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL USA
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Ethnography
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Ethnography is the systematic study of people and cultures. It is designed to explore cultural phenomena where the researcher observes society from the point of view of the subject of the study, an ethnography is a means to represent graphically and in writing the culture of a group. The word can thus be said to have a double meaning, the resulting field study or a case report reflects the knowledge and the system of meanings in the lives of a cultural group. The typical ethnography is a study and so includes a brief history, and an analysis of the terrain, the climate. In all cases it should be reflexive, make a contribution toward the understanding of the social life of humans, have an aesthetic impact on the reader. An ethnography records all observed behavior and describes all symbol-meaning relations, the word ethnography is derived from the Greek ἔθνος, meaning a company, later a people, nation and -graphy meaning field of study. Ethnographic studies focus on large groups of people who interact over time. Ethnography is a design, where the researcher explains about shared learnt patterns of values, behaviour, beliefs. The field of anthropology originated from Europe and England designed in late 19th century and it spread its roots to the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. Some of the main contributors like EB Tylor from Britain and Lewis H Morgan, franz Boas, Bronislaw Malinowski, Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, were a group of researchers from United States who contributed the idea of cultural relativism to the literature. He gives the point of the native and this became the origin of field work. Since Malinowski was very firm with his approach he applied it practically and he was interested in learning the language of the islanders and stayed there for a long time doing his field work. The field of ethnography became very popular in the late 19th century, again, in the latter part of the 19th century, the field of anthropology became a good support for scientific formation. Though the field was flourishing it had a lot of threat to encounter, post colonialism, the research climate shifted towards post-modernism and feminism. Therefore, the field of anthropology moved into discipline of social science, gerhard Friedrich Müller developed the concept of ethnography as a separate discipline whilst participating in the Second Kamchatka Expedition as a professor of history and geography. Whilst involved in the expedition, he differentiated Völker-Beschreibung as an area of study. This became known as ethnography, following the introduction of the Greek neologism ethnographia by Johann Friedrich Schöpperlin, there are different forms of ethnography, confessional ethnography, life history, feminist ethnography etc. Two popular forms of ethnography are realist ethnography and critical ethnography, realist ethnography, is a traditional approach used by cultural anthropologists
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Ethnomethodology
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Ethnomethodology is the study of methods people use for understanding and producing the social order in which they live. It generally seeks to provide an alternative to mainstream sociological approaches, in its most radical form, it poses a challenge to the social sciences as a whole. On the other hand, its investigations led to the founding of conversation analysis. According to Psathas, it is possible to five major approaches within the ethnomethodological family of disciplines. Ethnomethodology provides methods which have used in ethnographic studies to produce accounts of peoples methods for negotiating everyday situations. It is a fundamentally descriptive discipline which does not engage in the explanation or evaluation of the social order undertaken as a topic of study. However, applications have found within many applied disciplines, such as software design. The terms etymology can be broken down into its three constituent parts, ethno - method - ology, for the purpose of explanation. The focus of the used in our example is the social order of surfing. The approach was developed by Harold Garfinkel, who attributed its origin to his work investigating the conduct of jury members in 1954. His interest was in describing the common sense methods through which members of a jury produce themselves in a room as a jury. Such methods serve to constitute the order of being a juror for the members of the jury, as well as for researchers and other interested parties. This interest developed out of Garfinkels critque of Talcott Parsons attempt to derive a theory of society. This critique originated in his reading of Alfred Schutz, though Garfinkel ultimately revised many of Schutzs ideas, for the ethnomethodologist, participants produce the order of social settings through their shared sense making practices. Thus, there is an essential natural reflexity between the activity of making sense of a setting and the ongoing production of that setting. Furthermore, these practices are witnessably enacted, making available for study. This opens up a broad and multi-faceted area of inquiry. ”Ethnomethodology has perplexed commentators, due to its approach to questions of theory. It also has a correspondence with the later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein
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Social network analysis
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Social network analysis is the process of investigating social structures through the use of networks and graph theory. It characterizes networked structures in terms of nodes and the ties, edges and these networks are often visualized through sociograms in which nodes are represented as points and ties are represented as lines. Social network analysis has emerged as a key technique in modern sociology, in the 1930s Jacob Moreno and Helen Jennings introduced basic analytical methods. Even in the study of literature, network analysis has been applied by Anheier, Gerhards and Romo, Wouter De Nooy, indeed, social network analysis has found applications in various academic disciplines, as well as practical applications such as countering money laundering and terrorism. Homophily, The extent to which actors form ties with similar versus dissimilar others, similarity can be defined by gender, race, age, occupation, educational achievement, status, values or any other salient characteristic. Homophily is also referred to as assortativity, multiplexity, The number of content-forms contained in a tie. For example, two people who are friends and also work together would have a multiplexity of 2, multiplexity has been associated with relationship strength. Mutuality/Reciprocity, The extent to which two actors reciprocate each others friendship or other interaction, Network Closure, A measure of the completeness of relational triads. An individuals assumption of network closure is called transitivity, transitivity is an outcome of the individual or situational trait of Need for Cognitive Closure. Propinquity, The tendency for actors to have ties with geographically close others. Bridge, An individual whose weak ties fill a structural hole and it also includes the shortest route when a longer one is unfeasible due to a high risk of message distortion or delivery failure. Centrality, Centrality refers to a group of metrics that aim to quantify the importance or influence of a node within a network. Examples of common methods of measuring centrality include betweenness centrality, closeness centrality, eigenvector centrality, alpha centrality, density, The proportion of direct ties in a network relative to the total number possible. Distance, The minimum number of required to connect two particular actors, as popularized by Stanley Milgrams small world experiment and the idea of six degrees of separation. Structural holes, The absence of ties between two parts of a network, finding and exploiting a structural hole can give an entrepreneur a competitive advantage. This concept was developed by sociologist Ronald Burt, and is referred to as an alternate conception of social capital. Tie Strength, Defined by the combination of time, emotional intensity, intimacy. Strong ties are associated with homophily, propinquity and transitivity, while ties are associated with bridges
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Positivism
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Positivism is a philosophical theory stating that positive knowledge is based on natural phenomena and their properties and relations. Thus, information derived from experience, interpreted through reason and logic. Positivism holds that knowledge is found only in this derived knowledge. Verified data received from the senses are known as empirical evidence, Positivism also holds that society, like the physical world, operates according to general laws. Introspective and intuitive knowledge is rejected, as are metaphysics and theology, Comte argued that, much as the physical world operates according to gravity and other absolute laws, so does society, and further developed positivism into a Religion of Humanity. The English noun positivism was re-imported in the 19th century from the French word positivisme, the corresponding adjective has been used in similar sense to discuss law since the time of Chaucer. Wilhelm Dilthey popularized the distinction between Geisteswissenschaft and Naturwissenschaften, the consideration that laws in physics may not be absolute but relative, and, if so, this might be more true of social sciences, was stated, in different terms, by G. B. Vico, in contrast to the positivist movement, asserted the superiority of the science of the human mind, Positivism asserts that all authentic knowledge allows verification and that all authentic knowledge assumes that the only valid knowledge is scientific. Émile Durkheim reformulated sociological positivism as a foundation of social research, Wilhelm Dilthey, in contrast, fought strenuously against the assumption that only explanations derived from science are valid. Dilthey was in part influenced by the historicism of Leopold von Ranke, at the turn of the 20th century the first wave of German sociologists, including Max Weber and Georg Simmel, rejected the doctrine, thus founding the antipositivist tradition in sociology. Later antipositivists and critical theorists have associated positivism with scientism, science as ideology, but can any one conceive of a more pointless philosophy, seeing that what we can say clearly amounts to next to nothing. If we omitted all that is unclear we would probably be left with completely uninteresting, Logical positivists rejected metaphysical speculation and attempted to reduce statements and propositions to pure logic. Strong critiques of this approach by philosophers such as Karl Popper, Willard Van Orman Quine and Thomas Kuhn have been highly influential, in historiography the debate on positivism has been characterized by the quarrel between positivism and historicism. Arguments against positivist approaches in historiography include that history differs from sciences like physics and ethology in subject matter and that much of what history studies is nonquantifiable, and therefore to quantify is to lose in precision. Experimental methods and mathematical models do not generally apply to history, Positivism in the social sciences is usually characterized by quantitative approaches and the proposition of quasi-absolute laws. A significant exception to this trend is represented by cultural anthropology, in psychology the positivist movement was influential in the development of operationalism. Economic thinker Friedrich Hayek rejected positivism in the sciences as hopelessly limited in comparison to evolved and divided knowledge. For example, much legislation falls short in contrast to pre-literate or incompletely defined common or evolved law, in contemporary social science, strong accounts of positivism have long since fallen out of favour
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Subfields of sociology
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Sociology can be described as all of the following, The study of society. Academic discipline – body of knowledge given to - or received by - a disciple, a branch or sphere of knowledge, or field of study, field of science – widely recognized category of specialized expertise within science, and typically embodies its own terminology and nomenclature. Such a field will usually be represented by one or more scientific journals, there are many sociology-related scientific journals. Social science – field of scholarship that explores aspects of human society. He is thus considered by some to be the forerunner of sociology
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Social conflict
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Social conflict is the struggle for agency or power in society. It is a social relationship wherein the action is oriented intentionally for carrying out the own will against the resistance of other party or parties. Conflict theory emphasizes interests, rather than norms and values, in conflict, the pursuit of interests generates various types of conflict. Thus conflict is seen as an aspect of social life rather than an abnormal occurrence. Competition over resources is often the cause of conflict, the three tenets of this theory are the following, 1) Society is composed of different groups that compete for resources. 2) While societies may portray a sense of cooperation, a power struggle exists between social groups as they pursue their own interests. Within societies, certain groups control specific resources and means of production, 3) Social groups will use resources to their own advantage in the pursuit of their goals. This often means that those who lack control over resources will be taken advantage of, as a result, many dominated groups will struggle with other groups in attempt to gain control. The majority of the time, the groups with the most resources will gain or maintain power, the idea that those who have control will maintain control is known as The Matthew Effect. One branch of conflict theory is critical criminology and this term is based upon the view that the fundamental causes of crime is oppression, resulting from social and economic forces operating within a given society. Another branch of conflict theory is the theory of aging. This came about in the 1980s due to a setback in federal spending and a loss of jobs across the nation, among those that were the worst affected were women, low-income families, and minorities. The mode of production of material life conditions the process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, from forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution, the changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure. In broad outline, the Asiatic, ancient, feudal and modern bourgeois modes of production may be designated as epochs marking progress in the development of society. The prehistory of human society accordingly closes with this social formation, http, //www. marxists. org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface. htm Karl Marx, a German revolutionary, emphasized his materialist views on ownership and means of production. He argued that what is most valued is a result of labour and founded his ideas based on a capitalistic community
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Criminology
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Criminology is the scientific study of the nature, extent, management, causes, control, consequences, and prevention of criminal behavior, both on the individual and social levels. The term criminology was coined in 1885 by Italian law professor Raffaele Garofalo as criminologia, later, French anthropologist Paul Topinard used the analogous French term criminologie. In the mid-18th century criminology arose as social philosophers gave thought to crime, over time, several schools of thought have developed. There were three schools of thought in early criminological theory spanning the period from the mid-18th century to the mid-twentieth century, Classical, Positive. The Classical School, which developed in the century, was based on utilitarian philosophy. Cesare Beccaria, author of On Crimes and Punishments, Jeremy Bentham, thus, it ignores the possibility of irrationality and unconscious drives as motivators. Punishment can deter people from crime, as the costs outweigh benefits, the more swift and certain the punishment, the more effective it is in deterring criminal behavior. The Classical school of thought came about at a time when major reform in penology occurred, also, this time period saw many legal reforms, the French Revolution, and the development of the legal system in the United States. The Positivist school presumes that criminal behavior is caused by internal and external factors outside of the individuals control, the scientific method was introduced and applied to study human behavior. Positivism can be broken up into three segments which include biological, psychological and social positivism, Cesare Lombroso, an Italian sociologist working in the late 19th century, is regarded as the father of criminology. He was one of the key contributors to biological positivism and founded the Italian school of criminology, Lombroso took a scientific approach, insisting on empirical evidence for studying crime. This approach, influenced by the theory of phrenology and by Charles Darwin. Criminologists have since rejected Lombrosos biological theories, with groups not used in his studies. Sociological positivism suggests that factors such as poverty, membership of subcultures. Adolphe Quetelet made use of data and statistical analysis to gain insight into the relationship between crime and sociological factors and he found that age, gender, poverty, education, and alcohol consumption were important factors related to crime. Lance Lochner conducted three different research experiments that shared the same conclusion, schooling reduces crime by a significant margin, Rawson W. Rawson utilized crime statistics to suggest a link between population density and crime rates, with crowded cities creating an environment conducive for crime. Joseph Fletcher and John Glyde also presented papers to the Statistical Society of London on their studies of crime, Henry Mayhew used empirical methods and an ethnographic approach to address social questions and poverty, and presented his studies in London Labour and the London Poor. Émile Durkheim viewed crime as an aspect of society, with uneven distribution of wealth
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Social constructionism
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The theory centers on the notions that human beings rationalize their experience by creating models of the social world and share and reify these models through language. A major focus of social constructionism is to uncover the ways in which individuals and it involves looking at the ways social phenomena are created, institutionalized, known, and made into tradition by humans. In terms of background, social constructionism is rooted in symbolic interactionism, with Berger and Luckmans The Social Construction of Reality published in 1966, this concept found its hold. More than four decades later, a number of theory. It is a viewpoint that uproots social processes simultaneously playful and serious and it provides a substitute to the Western intellectual tradition where the researcher earnestly seeks certainty in a representation of reality by means of propositions. Rather, there can be multiple realities that compete for truth, Social constructionism understands the fundamental role of language and communication and this understanding has contributed to the linguistic turn and more recently the turn to discourse theory. The majority of social constructionists abide by the belief that language does not mirror reality, rather, a broad definition of social constructionism has its supporters and critics in the organizational sciences. A constructionist approach to organizational and managerial phenomena appear to be more commonplace. Berger and Luckmann give credit to Max Scheler as an influence as he created the idea of Sociology of knowledge which influenced social construction theory. Social construction may mean many things to many people, X need not have existed, or need not be at all as it is. X, or X as it is at present, is not determined by the nature of things, Hacking adds that the following claims are also often, though not always, implied by the use of the phrase social construction, X is quite bad as it is. We would be better off if X were done away with. Thus a claim that gender is socially constructed probably means that gender, as understood, is not an inevitable result of biology. In addition, depending on who is making the claim, it may mean that our current understanding of gender is harmful, according to Hacking, social construction claims are not always clear about exactly what isnt inevitable, or exactly what should be done away with. Consider a hypothetical claim that quarks are socially constructed, on one reading, this means that quarks themselves are not inevitable or determined by the nature of things. Hackings distinction is based on metaphysics, with a split between things out in the world, on one hand, and ideas thereof in our minds. Hacking is less advocating a serious, particular metaphysics than he is suggesting a way to analyse claims about social construction. Hacking is much more sympathetic to the second reading than the first, furthermore, he argues that, if the second reading is taken, there need not always be a conflict between saying that quarks are socially constructed and saying that they are real
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Sociology of culture
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For Georg Simmel, culture referred to the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history. Culture in the field is analyzed as the ways of thinking and describing, the ways of acting. Contemporary sociologists approach to culture is divided between a sociology of culture and cultural sociology - the terms are similar, though not interchangeable. The sociology of culture is a concept, and considers some topics. By way of contrast, Jeffrey C. Alexander introduced the cultural sociology. As opposed to the field of studies, cultural sociology does not reduce all human matters to a problem of cultural encoding and decoding. For instance, Pierre Bourdieus cultural sociology has a clear recognition of the social and the economic as categories which are interlinked with, but not reducible to, Cultural sociology first emerged in Weimar Germany, where sociologists such as Alfred Weber used the term Kultursoziologie. Cultural sociology was then reinvented in the English-speaking world as a product of the turn of the 1960s. This type of cultural sociology may loosely be regarded as an approach incorporating cultural analysis, in the beginning of the cultural turn, sociologists tended to use qualitative methods and hermeneutic approaches to research, focusing on meanings, words, artifacts and symbols. Part of the legacy of the development of the field is still felt in the methods in the theories. For instance, relationships between culture, political control, and social class were early and lasting concerns in the field. As a major contributor to conflict theory, Marx argued that culture served to justify inequality, the ruling class, or the bourgeoisie produce a culture that promotes their interests, while repressing the interests of the proletariat. His most famous line to this effect is that Religion is the opium of the people, for this reason, Marx is a considered a materialist as he believes that the economic produces the cultural, which stands Hegel on his head, who argued the ideal produced the material. Durkheim held the belief that culture has many relationships to society include, Logical- Power over individuals belongs to certain cultural categories. Functional- Certain rites and myths create and build up social order by having more people create strong beliefs, the greater the number of people who believe strongly in these myths more will the social order be strengthened. Historical- Culture had its origins in society, and from those experiences came evolution into things such as classification systems, Weber innovated the idea of a status group as a certain type of subculture. Status groups are based on such as, race, ethnicity, religion, region, occupation, gender, sexual preference. These groups live a lifestyle based on different values and norms
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Deviance (sociology)
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In sociology, deviance describes an action or behavior that violates social norms, including a formally enacted rule, as well as informal violations of social norms. It is the purview of criminologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and sociologists to study how these norms are created, how they change over time, norms are rules and expectations by which members of society are conventionally guided. Deviance is an absence of conformity to these norms, social norms differ from culture to culture. For example, a deviant act can be committed in one society that breaks a social norm there, Deviance can be relative to place and time because what is considered deviant in one social context may be non-deviant in another. Killing another human is considered wrong, except when governments permit it during warfare or for self defense, deviant actions can be mala in se or mala prohibita. Three broad sociological classes exist that describe deviant behavior, namely, structural functionalism, symbolic interaction, social integration is the attachment to groups and institutions, while social regulation is the adherence to the norms and values of the society. Those who are very integrated fall under the category of altruism, similarly, those who are very regulated fall under fatalism and those who are very unregulated fall under anomie. Durkheims theory attributes social deviance to extremes of the dimensions of the social bond, altruistic suicide, egoistic suicide, and anomic suicide are the three forms of suicide that can happen due to extremes. Durkheim claimed that deviance was in fact a normal and necessary part of social organization, when he studied deviance he stated four important functions of deviance. Deviance affirms cultural values and norms, any definition of virtue rests on an opposing idea of vice, There can be no good without evil and no justice without crime. Deviance defines moral boundaries, people learn right from wrong by defining people as deviant, a serious form of deviance forces people to come together and react in the same way against it. Deviance pushes societys moral boundaries which, in turn leads to social change, robert K. Merton discussed deviance in terms of goals and means as part of his strain/anomie theory. He postulated that a response to societal expectations and the means by which the individual pursued those goals were useful in understanding deviance. Often, non-routine collective behavior is said to map onto economic explanations, Merton described 5 types of deviance in terms of the acceptance or rejection of social goals and the institutionalized means of achieving them,1. Innovators accept societys goals, but reject socially acceptable means of achieving them, conformists accept societys goals and the socially acceptable means of achieving them. Ritualism refers to the inability to reach a cultural goal thus embracing the rules to the point where the people in question lose sight of their goals in order to feel respectable. Ritualists reject societys goals, but accept societys institutionalised means, ritualists are most commonly found in dead-end, repetitive jobs, where they are unable to achieve societys goals but still adhere to societys means of achievement and social norms. Retreatism is the rejection of both goals and means, letting the person in question drop out
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Demography
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Demography is the statistical study of populations, especially human beings. As a very general science, it can analyse any kind of dynamic living population, Demography encompasses the study of the size, structure, and distribution of these populations, and spatial or temporal changes in them in response to birth, migration, ageing, and death. Based on the research of the earth, earths population up to the year 2050 and 2100 can be estimated by demographers. Demographics are quantifiable characteristics of a given population, demographic analysis can cover whole societies or groups defined by criteria such as education, nationality, religion, and ethnicity. Educational institutions usually treat demography as a field of sociology, though there are a number of independent demography departments, demographic thoughts can be traced back to antiquity, and were present in many civilizations and cultures, like Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, India and China. In ancient Greece, this can be found in the writings of Herodotus, Thucidides, Hippocrates, Epicurus, Protagoras, Polus, Plato and Aristotle. In Rome, writers and philosophers like Cicero, Seneca, Pliny the elder, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Cato, in the Middle ages, Christian thinkers devoted much time in refuting the Classical ideas on demography. Important contributors to the field were William of Conches, Bartholomew of Lucca, William of Auvergne, William of Pagula, and Ibn Khaldun. One of the earliest demographic studies in the period was Natural and Political Observations Made upon the Bills of Mortality by John Graunt. Among the studys findings were that one third of the children in London died before their sixteenth birthday, mathematicians, such as Edmond Halley, developed the life table as the basis for life insurance mathematics. Richard Price was credited with the first textbook on life contingencies published in 1771, followed later by Augustus de Morgan, at the end of the 18th century, Thomas Robert Malthus concluded that, if unchecked, populations would be subject to exponential growth. He feared that population growth would tend to outstrip growth in production, leading to ever-increasing famine. He is seen as the father of ideas of overpopulation. Later, more sophisticated and realistic models were presented by Benjamin Gompertz, the period 1860-1910 can be characterized as a period of transition wherein demography emerged from statistics as a separate field of interest. There are two types of data collection—direct and indirect—with several different methods of each type, direct data comes from vital statistics registries that track all births and deaths as well as certain changes in legal status such as marriage, divorce, and migration. In developed countries with good registration systems, registry statistics are the best method for estimating the number of births and deaths, a census is the other common direct method of collecting demographic data. A census is conducted by a national government and attempts to enumerate every person in a country. Analyses are conducted after a census to estimate how much over or undercounting took place and these compare the sex ratios from the census data to those estimated from natural values and mortality data
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Sociology of education
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The sociology of education is the study of how public institutions and individual experiences affect education and its outcomes. It is mostly concerned with the schooling systems of modern industrial societies, including the expansion of higher, further, adult. Education has often been very much so seen as a fundamentally optimistic human endeavour characterised by aspirations for progress and it is understood by many to be a means of overcoming handicaps, achieving greater equality, and acquiring wealth and social status. Education is perceived as a place where children can develop according to their unique needs and it is also perceived as one of the best means of achieving greater social equality. Many would say that the purpose of education should be to every individual to their full potential. Few would argue that any education system accomplishes this goal perfectly, some take a particularly critical view, arguing that the education system is designed with the intention of causing the social reproduction of inequality. Sociological studies showed how schooling patterns reflected, rather than challenged, class stratification, after the general collapse of functionalism from the late 1960s onwards, the idea of education as an unmitigated good was even more profoundly challenged. Neo-Marxists argued that school education simply produced a labour force essential to late-capitalist class relations. The sociology of education contains a number of theories, some of the main theories are presented below. Important works in this tradition have been, and, all of these works were concerned with the way in which school structures were implicated in social class inequalities in Britain. More recent work in this tradition has broadened its focus to include gender, ethnic differentials, the political arithmetic tradition was attacked by the New Sociology of Education of the 1970s which rejected quantitative research methods. This heralded a period of division within the sociology of education. However, the political tradition, while rooted in quantitative methods, has increasingly engaged with mixed methods approaches. Structural functionalists believe that society leans towards social equilibrium and social order and they see society like a human body, in which institutions such as education are like important organs that keep the society/body healthy and well. Social health means the same as social order, and is guaranteed when nearly everyone accepts the general values of their society. Hence structural functionalists believe the aim of key institutions, such as education, is to socialize children, socialization is the process by which the new generation learns the knowledge, attitudes and values that they will need as productive citizens. Students learn these values because their behavior at school is regulated until they gradually internalize, Education must also perform another function, As various jobs become vacant, they must be filled with the appropriate people. Therefore, the purpose of education is to sort and rank individuals for placement in the labor market
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Economic sociology
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Economic sociology is the study of the social cause and effect of various economic phenomena. The field can be divided into a classical period and a contemporary one. The classical period was concerned particularly with modernity and its constituent aspects which are rationalisation, secularisation, urbanisation, social stratification, as sociology arose primarily as a reaction to capitalist modernity, economics played a role in much classic sociological inquiry. The specific term economic sociology was first coined by William Stanley Jevons in 1879, later to be used in the works of Émile Durkheim, Max Weber and Georg Simmel between 1890 and 1920. The relationship between capitalism and modernity is a salient issue, perhaps best demonstrated in Webers The Protestant Ethic, Economic sociology may be said to have begun with Tocquevilles Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution. Marxs historical materialism would attempt to demonstrate how economic forces influence the structure of society on a fundamental level, Émile Durkheims The Division of Labour in Society was published in 1922, whilst Max Webers Economy and Society was released in the same year. Contemporary economic sociology focuses particularly on the consequences of economic exchanges, the social meanings they involve. To this may be added Amitai Etzioni, who has developed the idea of socioeconomics, the focus on mathematical analysis and utility maximisation during the 20th century has led some to see economics as a discipline moving away from its roots in the social sciences. Many critiques of economics or economic policy begin from the accusation that abstract modelling is missing some key social phenomenon that needs to be addressed, Economic sociology is an attempt by sociologists to redefine in sociological terms questions traditionally addressed by economists. The concept of embeddedness serves sociologists who study technological developments, mark Granovetter and Patrick McGuire mapped the social networks which determined the economics of the electrical industry in the United States. Ronen Shamir analyzed how electrification in Mandatory Palestine facilitated the creation of an ethnic-based dual-economy, polanyis form of market skepticism, however, has been criticized for intensifying rather than limiting the economization of society. These works elaborated the concept of embeddedness, which states that relations between individuals or firms take place within existing social relations. Social network analysis has been the primary methodology for studying this phenomenon, granovetters theory of the strength of weak ties and Ronald Burts concept of structural holes are two best known theoretical contributions of this field. Modern Marxist thought has focused on the implications of capitalism. Economic sociology is sometimes synonymous with socioeconomics, at the turn of the 20th century, ethnic whites tended to migrate to urban enclaves on the East Coast and parts of the Midwest. Mexican immigrants settled along South-west border, Chinese immigrants, prior to the Chinese exclusion act, moved and settled along the Pacific states. The regulation of immigrants ebbed and flowed according to demands of the labor market. Examples include availability of work, railroad building, and steel production or lack of home countrys ability to provide adequate career opportunities
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Environmental sociology
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In addition, considerable attention is paid to the social processes by which certain environmental conditions become socially defined as problems. Correspondingly, environmental problems must all be understood via social processes and this interactiveness is now broadly accepted, but many aspects of the debate continue in contemporary research in the field. Ancient Greeks idealized life in using the idea of the pastoral. Much later, Romantic writers such as Wordsworth took their inspiration from nature, modern thought surrounding human-environment relations can be traced back to Charles Darwin. Darwin’s concept of natural selection suggested that certain social characteristics played a key role in the survivability of groups in the natural environment, although typically taken at the micro-level, evolutionary principles, particularly adaptability, serve as a microcosm of human ecology. Work by Craig Humphrey and Frederick Buttel traces the linkages between Darwins work on natural selection, human ecological sociology, and environmental sociology. In its foundational years, classical sociology thus saw social and cultural factors as the dominant, if not exclusive and this lens down-played interactive factors in the relationship between humans and their biophysical environments. Environmental sociology emerged as a coherent subfield of inquiry after the movement of the 1960s. The works of William R. Catton, Jr. and Riley Dunlap, among others, in the late 1970s, they called for a new holistic, or systems perspective. Since the 1970s, general sociology has noticeably transformed to include environmental forces in social explanations, Environmental sociology has now solidified as a respected, interdisciplinary field of study in academia. The duality of the human condition rests with cultural uniqueness and evolutionary traits, from one perspective, humans are embedded in the ecosphere and co-evolved alongside other species. Humans share the basic ecological dependencies as other inhabitants of nature. From the other perspectives, humans are distinguished from other species because of their capacities, distinct cultures. Human creations have the power to manipulate, destroy. According to Buttel, there are five basic epistemologies in environmental sociology, in practice, this means five different theories of what to blame for environmental degradation, i. e. what to research or consider as important. In order of their invention, these ideas of what to build on each other. Hardin offered privatization of resources or government regulation as solutions to environmental degradation caused by tragedy of the commons conditions, many other sociologists shared this view of solutions well into the 1970s. There have been critiques of this view particularly political scientist Elinor Ostrom, or economists Amartya Sen
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Sociology of the family
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The sociology of the family examines the family as an institution and a unit of socialization. Family is said to be an essential for a healthy mind, how they rely on one another. How they work together/rely on the work of someone in the family, examples of specific issues looked at include, Changing roles of family members. Each member is restricted by the sex roles of the traditional family and these roles such as the father as the worker and the mother as the homemaker are declining. The mother is becoming the supplementary provider and she retains the responsibilities of child rearing, therefore, the female role in the labor force is “compatible with the demands of the traditional family. ”Sociology studies the adaptation of the males role to caregiver as well as provider. The gender roles are increasingly interwoven, one approach is survey research of contemporary families. This holds the benefit of leaving statistical data and large and hopefully random samples from which a researcher can interpolate the general traits of a society, however, survey respondents tend to answer as would feel regular or ideal rather than as things might actually be. It also gives a very one-sided explanation view of a larger group, the information is often outdated, not representing the true statistics of the world. The information can also be deceiving and not represent the points that the surveys. Another method is ethnographic research of families, where surveys allow for broad but shallow analyses, observation allows sociologists to obtain rich information on a source of a much more limited size. It allows the research an insider perspective, and through this closer look, where surveys are strong, however, ethnographic research is weak. Finally, a researcher can use documented studies of families from the past as a source of information and these sources may include very personal items, legal records, and matters of public record. The construction of race in Western society and, to a degree and these bans functioned to enforce the one-drop rule and reenforce identity and privilege. Internationally, the far right continues to promote ideas of purity by working against the normalization of interracial couples and families. An example of the role of religion in this respect was thewitchcraft craze in Medieval Europe, according to Turner, this was a device to regulate the behavior of women, and the attack on women as witches was principally a critique of their sexuality. Thus, for the aristocracy, the point of marriage was to produce a male heir to the property of the household. Since child mortality was common, women had to be more or less continuously pregnant during their marriage to guarantee a living male heir, furthermore, this heir had to be legitimate, if disputes over inheritance were to be avoided. This legitimacy could only be ensured by the heads of households marrying virgins, equally, daughters had to be sexually pure if they were to be eligible for marriage to other property-holding families
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Feminist sociology
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Focuses include sexual orientation, race, economic status, and nationality. At the core of feminist sociology is the idea of the oppression of women. Feminist thought has a history, however, which may be categorized into three waves. The current, third wave, emphasizes the concepts of globalization, heterosexism is a system of attitudes, bias, and discrimination in favour of male-female sexuality and relationships. For example, heterosexual marriage has been or is the lawful union between two people that was or is fully recognized and subsequently given full benefits in many countries. This has acted to greatly disadvantage people in same-sex relationships within society as compared with those in different-sex relationships, women who suffer from oppression due to race may find themselves in a double bind. The relationship between feminism and race was overlooked until the second wave of feminists produced greater literature on the topic of black feminism. Anna Julia Cooper and Ida Bell Wells-Barnett are African American women who were instrumental in conducting much research, Cooper and Wells-Barnett both consciously drew on their lived experiences as African American women to develop a systematic consciousness of society and social relations. As such, these women foreshadow the development of a feminist sociological theory based in the interests of women of colour, central debates include the topics of arranged marriage and female genital mutilation. Others have argued that these debates stem from Western orientalism and general political reluctance to accept foreign migrants, anarcha-feminism Liberal feminism Cultural feminism Feminist existentialism Radical feminism Marxist feminism Sex-positive feminism Psychoanalytic feminism Postmodern feminism Black feminism
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Sociology of health and illness
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The sociology of health and illness, alternatively the sociology of health and wellness, examines the interaction between society and health. The objective of this topic is to see how social life affects morbidity and mortality rate and this aspect of sociology differs from medical sociology in that this branch of sociology discusses health and illness in relation to social institutions such as family, employment, and school. The sociology of medicine limits its concern to the patient-practitioner relationship, the sociology of health and illness covers sociological pathology, reasons for seeking particular types of medical aid, and patient compliance or noncompliance with medical regimes. Health, or lack of health, was once attributed to biological or natural conditions. Sociologists have demonstrated that the spread of diseases is influenced by the socioeconomic status of individuals, ethnic traditions or beliefs. This topic requires an approach of analysis because the influence of societal factors varies throughout the world. This will be demonstrated through discussion of the diseases of each continent. These diseases are sociologically examined and compared based on the medicine, economics, religion. HIV/AIDS serves as a basis of comparison among regions. While it is problematic in certain areas, in others it has affected a relatively small percentage of the population. Sociological factors can help to explain why these discrepancies exist, there are obvious differences in patterns of health and illness across societies, over time, and within particular society types. Patterns of global change in health care systems make it more imperative than ever to research and comprehend the sociology of health, continuous changes in economy, therapy, technology and insurance can affect the way individual communities view and respond to the medical care available. These rapid fluctuations cause the issue of health and illness within social life to be dynamic in definition. Advancing information is vital because as patterns evolve, the study of the sociology of health, humans have long sought advice from those with knowledge or skill in healing. Paleopathology and other records, allow an examination of how ancient societies dealt with illness. Rulers in Ancient Egypt sponsored physicians that were specialists in specific diseases, imhotep was the first medical doctor known by name. An Egyptian who lived around 2650 B. C. he was an adviser to King Zoser at a time when Egyptians were making progress in medicine, among his contributions to medicine was a textbook on the treatment of wounds, broken bones, and even tumors. Stopping the spread of disease was of utmost importance for maintaining a healthy society
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Industrial sociology
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One branch of industrial sociology is Labor process theory. In 1974, Harry Braverman wrote Labor and Monopoly Capital, The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century and this book analyzed capitalist productive relations from a Marxist perspective. Following Marx, Braverman argued that work within capitalist organisations was exploitative and alienating, for Braverman the pursuit of capitalist interests over time ultimately leads to deskilling and routinisation of the worker. The Taylorist work design is the embodiment of this tendency. Braverman demonstrated several mechanisms of control in both the blue collar and clerical white collar labor force. His key contribution is his deskilling thesis, Braverman argued that capitalist owners and managers were incessantly driven to deskill the labor force to lower production costs and ensure higher productivity. Deskilled labour is cheap and above all easy to control due to the lack of direct engagement in the production process. In turn work becomes intellectually or emotionally unfulfilling, the lack of capitalist reliance on human skill reduces the need of employers to workers in anything. Bravermans contribution to the sociology of work and industry has been important and his theories of the labor process continue to inform teaching, Bravermans thesis has however been contested, notably by Andrew Freidman in his work Industry and Labour. Gallie has shown how important it is to approach the question of skill from a social class perspective and this means that Bravermans claims cant be applied to all social classes. The notion the particular type of technology workers were exposed to shapes their experience was most forcefully argued in a study by Blauner. He argued that work is alienating more than other types because of the different technologies workers use. Alienation, to Blauner, has four dimensions, powerlessness, meaninglessness, isolation, blauners claims however fail to recognize that the same technology can be experienced in a variety of ways. Additionally, workers today may work in teams to alleviate workers sense of alienation, since they are involved in the entire process, rather than just a small part of it. In conclusion, automative technologies and comupeterized work systems have typically enhanced workers job satisfaction and skill deployment in the better-paid, secure public, but, in more non-skilled manual work, they have just perpetuated job dissatisfaction, especially for the many women involved in this type of work. Bibliography of sociology Economic sociology Industrial and organizational psychology
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Social inequality
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It is the differentiation preference of access of social goods in the society brought about by power, religion, kinship, prestige, race, ethnicity, gender, age, and class. The social rights include labor market, the source of income, health care, and freedom of speech, education, political representation, and participation. Social inequality linked to Economic inequality, usually described on the basis of the distribution of income or wealth, is a frequently studied type of social inequality. However, social and natural resources other than purely economic resources are unevenly distributed in most societies. Many societies worldwide claim to be meritocracies – that is, that their societies exclusively distribute resources on the basis of merit, a modern representation of the sort of “meritocracy” Young feared may be seen in the series 3%. In many cases, social inequality is linked to racial inequality, ethnic inequality, and gender inequality, as well as other social statuses and these forms can be related to corruption. The most common metric for comparing social inequality in different nations is the Gini coefficient, Two nations may have identical Gini coefficients but dramatically different economic and/or quality of life, so the Gini coefficient must be contextualized for meaningful comparisons to be made. Social inequality is found in almost every society, in simple societies, those that have few social roles and statuses occupied by its members, social inequality may be very low. Anthropologists identify such highly egalitarian cultures as kinship-oriented, which appear to value social harmony more than wealth or status and these cultures are contrasted with materially oriented cultures in which status and wealth are prized and competition and conflict are common. Kinship-oriented cultures may actively work to prevent social hierarchies from developing because they believe that could lead to conflict, in todays world, most of our population lives in more complex than simple societies. As social complexity increases, inequality tends to increase along with a gap between the poorest and the most wealthy members of society. Social inequality can be classified into egalitarian societies, ranked society, egalitarian societies are those communities advocating for social equality through equal opportunities and rights hence no discrimination. People with special skills were not viewed as superior compared to the rest, the leaders do not have the power they only have influence. The norms and the beliefs the egalitarian society holds are for sharing equally, ranked society mostly is agricultural communities who hierarchically grouped from the chief who is viewed to have a status in the society. In this society, people are clustered regarding status and prestige and not by access to power, the chief is the most influential person followed by his family and relative, and those further related to him are less ranked. Stratified society is societies which horizontally ranked into the class, middle class. The classification is regarding wealth, power, and prestige, the upper class are mostly the leaders and are the most influential in the society. Its possible for a person in the society to move from one stratum to the other, the social status is also hereditable from one generation to the next
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Sociology of knowledge
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The sociology of knowledge is the study of the relationship between human thought and the social context within which it arises, and of the effects prevailing ideas have on societies. Complementary to the sociology of knowledge is the sociology of ignorance, including the study of nescience, ignorance, knowledge gaps, the sociology of knowledge was pioneered primarily by the sociologist Émile Durkheim at beginning of the 20th century. His work deals directly with how conceptual thought, language, while neither Durkheim, nor Mauss, specifically coined nor used the term sociology of knowledge, their work is an important first contribution to the field. With the dominance of functionalism through the years of the 20th century. The genealogical and archaeological studies of Michel Foucault are of contemporary influence. The Enlightenment movement ought not to be underestimated in its influence upon the social sciences, when these philosophers worked towards a scientific analysis of society, they were engaged in a sociology of ideas and values, albeit their own commitment was to critical rationalism. The Enlightenment strove for progress, change, secularism, but above all, to freedom, there was a commitment to practical science with humankind at the centre and this is the real source of social science. This new science was not interested in revealed knowledge or a priori knowledge but in the workings of humanity, human practices, western thought, therefore, received a significant movement towards cultural relativism, where cross-cultural comparison became the dominant methodology. Importantly, social science was created by philosophers who sought to turn ideas into actions and to unite theory, in this book, a justification for a new historical and sociological methodology, the main point is that the natural world and the social world are known in different ways. The former is known through external or empirical methods, whilst the latter can be known internally as well as externally, in other words, human history is a construct. This creates a key distinction between the natural world and the social world which is a central concept in the social sciences. This civil world, made up of actions, thoughts, ideas, myths, norms, religious beliefs, since these elements are socially constructed, they can be better understood than the physical world, understood as it is in abstraction. He also emphasizes the relationship between society and culture as key in this new historical perspective. Vico, mostly unknown in his own time, was the first to establish the foundations of a sociology of knowledge even if his concepts were not necessarily picked up by later writers, there is some evidence that Montesquieu and Karl Marx had read Vicos work. However the similarities in their works are superficial, limited mainly to the conception of their projects, characterised by cultural relativisim. While his works deal with a number of subjects, including suicide, the family, social structures, and social institutions, a large part of his work deals with the sociology of knowledge. This book has as its not only the elucidation of the social origins and function of religion. Durkheim worked largely out of a Kantian framework and sought to understand how the concepts and he argued, for example, that the categories of space and time were not a priori
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Sociology of literature
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The sociology of literature is a subfield of the sociology of culture. It studies the production of literature and its social implications. A notable example is Pierre Bourdieus 1992 Les Règles de LArt, Genèse et Structure du Champ Littéraire, translated by Susan Emanuel as Rules of Art, Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. None of the fathers of sociology produced a detailed study of literature. Karl Marxs theory of ideology has been directed at literature by Pierre Macherey, Terry Eagleton, emile Durkheims view of sociology as the study of externally defined social facts was redirected towards literature by Robert Escarpit. In 1920 it was republished in book form and this strongly influenced the Frankfurt School. A second edition, published in 1962, was influential on French structuralism. The novel form is therefore organised around the hero in pursuit of problematic values within a problematic world. Here, Lukács argued that the early 19th century historical novels central achievement was to represent realistically the differences between pre-capitalist past and capitalist present. He went on to argue that the success of the 1848 revolutions led to the decline of the novel into decorative monumentalization. The key figures in the novel were thus those of the early 19th century. Founded in 1923, the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt developed a kind of critical sociology indebted to Marx, Weber. Leading Frankfurt School critics who worked on literature included Adorno, Walter Benjamin, adornos Notes to Literature, Benjamins The Origin of German Tragic Drama and Löwentahls Literature and the Image of Man were each influential studies in the sociology of literature. Löwenthal continued this work at the University of California, Berkeley, adornos Notes to Literature is a collection of essays, the most influential of which is probably On Lyric Poetry and Society. It argued that thought is a reaction against the commodification and reification of modern life, citing Goethe. Habermas succeeded Adorno to the Chair of Sociology and Philosophy at Frankfurt, habermass first major work, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit was published in German in 1962, and in English translation as The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere in 1989. It attempted to explain the emergence of middle-class public opinion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These institutions sustained the early novel, newspaper and periodical press, Peter Bürger was Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Bremen
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Medical sociology
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The field commonly interacts with the sociology of knowledge, science and technology studies, and social epistemology. Health disparities commonly relate to categories such as class and race. Objective sociological research findings quickly become a normative and political issue, early work in medical sociology was conducted by Lawrence J Henderson whose theoretical interests in the work of Vilfredo Pareto inspired Talcott Parsons interests in sociological systems theory. Parsons is one of the fathers of medical sociology. The introduction of ‘social’ factors into medical explanation was most strongly evidenced in branches of medicine closely related to the community — Social Medicine and, later, Medical sociology can trace its intellectual lineage to the late 1800s. In the nineteenth century, two nascent disciplines — sociology and allopathic medicine — began to cross paths, for allopathic medicine, this time period witnessed the beginnings of medicine’s ongoing attempts to consolidate its professional powers and social legitimacy. Meanwhile, sociology was beginning to emerge as a distinct discipline, the first publication which formally linked medicine and sociology was The Importance of the Study of Medical Sociology”, authored by Charles McIntire and first published in 1894. Two key books followed, Elizabeth Blackwells Essays in Medical Sociology, the first journal to focus on medical sociology was the Journal of Sociological Medicine, which was published by the American Academy of Medicine, and existing for four years between 1915 and 1919. The American Public Health Association hosted a similar “Section of Sociology” between 1909 and 1921 and it took another quarter century before the next medical sociology journal would appear. Scattered “sociology of medicine” articles would continue to appear infrequently in medical journals between 1920 and 1950, in 1960, Austin Porterfield published what would become the first substantive disciplinary journal in medical sociology, the Journal of Health & Human Behavior. In the spring of 1967, the American Sociological Association took JHHB under its organizational wing where it was renamed the Journal of Health, eliot Freidson was the first editor. This same year marked the first issue of Social Science & Medicine, with its distinctively international. By the early 1970s, the sociology section of the British Sociological Association had established its own organizational footprint. During the 1950s and 1960s, the field of medical sociology underwent a period of growth—before peaking in the early 1970s. The number of stipends was well in excess of what was needed to support medical sociology graduate students, even the founding of the medical sociology section itself and the ASA’s decision to adopt the JHSB were underwritten by outside funding. Membership in the new ASA section was mercurial, in less than a year, the medical sociology section grew to 561 members. By 1964, membership had soared to nearly 900, in less than a half dozen years, the field went from publishing introductions to the field to summative reviews. By the mid-1970s, however, there were signs of trouble, established funding streams had dried up and were not replaced by alternative resources
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Military sociology
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Military sociology aims toward the systematic study of the military as a social group rather than as a Military organization. Military sociology also concerns civil-military relations and interactions between groups or governmental agencies. Contemporary military sociology is primarily a result of the World War II and these events initiated the systematic study of military sociology, though it stands to reason that the relationship between the military and society would predate these events. There are numerous topics within sociology, and it is important to note that its scope is not exclusively limited to the military institution itself or to its members. Rather, military sociology encompasses areas such as relations and the relationship between the military and other military groups or governmental agencies. There has been discussion whether the military should be seen as more of an occupation rather than an institution. Although the military still retains institutional principles the military is becoming oriented to the principles of business and economics and this can be explored in relating to other professions in the grouping of power and compensation. There are different ranks within the military, granting some people more power, many young people look to the military for compensation benefits and the opportunity to attend college without enormous loans. Military profession holds the view that it is a unique profession, there are six key elements that are paramount in shaping the character of the military profession, according to Sam C. Perhaps no other places as much emphasis on procedures for assimilating new members as does the armed forces. Assimilation involves the process of recruitment, selection, training. Not only must the new recruit, officer, or enlisted officer learn new, the American Military utilizes the citizen-soldier concept to gather military personnel from across the country. This term means the ability to round up or call up troops for war or military tour at a virtual moments notice. But once the assignment or tour is over, the personnel are returned to civilian life. According to Norman A. Hilman 2.5 million men were enlisted into military during the peacetime draft. Although, there were men and now women who have voluntarily joined in the armed forces, there are those who view joining the military. The negative characterization of military life can be a turn off for most people looking from the outside. Throughout its changes the numbers have not declined, they have stayed steady
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Political sociology
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Contemporary political sociology involves, but is not limited to, the study of the relations between state, society, and citizens. Where a typical research question in political sociology might have been Why do so few American or European citizens choose to vote, or even What difference does it make if women get elected. Political sociologists also now ask, How is the body a site of power, how are emotions relevant to global poverty. Or What difference does knowledge make to democracy, traditionally there were four main areas of research, The sociopolitical formation of the modern state, Who rules. From this perspective, we can identify three major theoretical frameworks, pluralism, elite or managerial theory, and class analysis, pluralism sees politics primarily as a contest among competing interest groups. Elite or managerial theory is called a state-centered approach. A leading representative is Theda Skocpol, social class theory analysis emphasizes the political power of capitalist elites. It can be split into two parts, one is the structure or instrumentalist approach, whereas another is the structuralist approach. The power structure approach focuses on the question of who rules, the structuralist approach emphasizes the way a capitalist economy operates, only allowing and encouraging the state to do some things but not others. In part, this is a product of the complexity of social relations, the impact of social movement organizing. To a significant part, however, it is due to the radical rethinking of social theory and this is as much focused now on micro questions, as it is on macro questions. Chief influences here include cultural studies, post-structuralism, pragmatism, structuration theory, while democracy promises impartiality and legal equality before all citizens, the capitalist system results in unequal economic power and thus possible political inequality as well. For pluralists, the distribution of power is not determined by economic interests but by multiple social divisions. The distribution of power is achieved through the interplay of contending interest groups. The government in this model functions just as a broker and is free from control by any economic power. Ultimately, decisions are reached through the process of bargaining. Many factors, pluralists believe, have ended the domination of the sphere by an economic elite. The power of organized labour and the increasingly interventionist state have placed restrictions on the power of capital to manipulate and control the state
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Sociology of race and ethnic relations
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The sociology of race and ethnic relations is the study of social, political, and economic relations between races and ethnicities at all levels of society. This area encompasses the study of racism, residential segregation, the sociological analysis of race and ethnicity frequently interacts with other areas of sociology such as stratification and social psychology, as well as with postcolonial theory. At the level of policy, ethnic relations is discussed in terms of either assimilationism or multiculturalism. Anti-racism forms another style of policy, particularly popular in the 1960s and 1970s, at the level of academic inquiry, ethnic relations is discussed either by the experiences of individual racial-ethnic groups or else by overarching theoretical issues. Marx described society as having nine great classes, the capitalist class and he hoped for the working class to rise up against the capitalist class in an attempt to stop the exploitation of the working class. He blamed part of their failure to organize on the capitalist class, as they separated black and this separation, specifically between Blacks and Whites in America, contributed to racism. Marx attributes capitalisms contribution to racism through segmented labor markets and a racial inequality of earnings, weber laid the foundations for a micro-sociology of ethnic relations beginning in 1906. Weber argued that biological traits could not be the basis for group foundation unless they were conceived as shared characteristics and it was this shared perception and common customs that create and distinguish one ethnicity from another. This differs from the views of many of his contemporaries who believed that a group was formed from biological similarities alone apart from social perception of membership in a group. Du Bois is well known as one of the most influential black scholars, du Bois educated himself on his people, and sought academia as a way to enlighten others on the social injustices against his people. Du Bois believed that Black Americans should embrace higher education and use their new access to schooling to achieve a position within society. He referred to this idea as the Talented Tenth, with gaining popularity, he also preached the belief that for blacks to be free in some places, they must be free everywhere. After traveling to Africa and Russia, he recanted his original philosophy of integration, booker T. Washington was considered one of the most influential black educators of the 19th and 20th centuries. Born in 1856 as a slave in Virginia, Washington came of age as slavery was coming to an end, just as slavery ended, however, it was replaced by a system of sharecropping in the South that resulted in black indebtedness. By focusing on education for blacks, rather than political advancement, secretly, however, he pursued legal challenges against segregation and disfranchisement of blacks. The effect is so strong that even simply asking the test-taker to state her or his race before taking the test will significantly alter test performance, psychoanalysis has much to offer the study of racism. Its central proposition is that rationality is not the state of the individual. Humans resist change because change threatens established ways of dealing with anxiety, individual defence mechanisms contribute to social defence mechanisms
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Rural sociology
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It is an active field in much of the world, originating in the United States in the 1910s with close ties to the national Department of Agriculture and land-grant university colleges of agriculture. The sociology of food and agriculture is one focus of rural sociology, many rural sociologists work in the areas of development studies, community studies, community development, and environmental studies. Much of the research involves the Third World, Rural sociology was the first and for a time the largest branch of American sociology. Histories of the field were popular in the 1950s and 1960s, czechoslovakia opened three research centers, and others opened in Romania and Yugoslavia. The mission statements of university departments of sociology have expanded to include more topics. The University of Wisconsin set up one of the first departments of rural sociology and it has now dropped the term rural and changed its name to the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology. Similarly, the Rural Sociology Program at the University of Kentucky has evolved into the, Department of Community and Leadership Development, while transferring the graduate program in rural sociology to the Sociology Department. Cornell Universitys department of sociology has also changed its name to the department of Development Sociology. It publishes the quarterly journal Rural Sociology. The full run of issues is online from 1936-89 through Cornell University Librarys program of putting online core historical resources in rural sociology. The European Society for Rural Sociology was founded in 1957 and it published the International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food. The International Association for Society and Natural Resources publishes the Journal of Society, the Growth of a Science, A Half-Century of Rural Sociological Research in the United States. The End of Rural Society and the Future of Rural Sociology, the Encyclopedia of Rural America, The Land and People, 1341pp Hanson, Victor Davis. The Other Greeks, The Family Farm and the Agrarian Roots of Western Civilization excerpt and text search Nelson, Rural Sociology, Its Origins and Growth in the United States. Encyclopaedia of Urban & Rural Sociology, Social & Psychological Behaviour Smith, the Institutional and Intellectual Origins of Rural Sociology online Sorokin, Pitirim A. Carle Zimmerman and Charles Galpin. The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, classic sociological study, complete text online free European Society for Rural Sociology Rural Sociological Society Rural Sociology back issues, 1938-1989
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Sociology of scientific knowledge
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The sociology of scientific ignorance is complementary to the sociology of scientific knowledge. For comparison, the sociology of knowledge studies the impact of human knowledge, sociologists of scientific knowledge study the development of a scientific field and attempt to identify points of contingency or interpretative flexibility where ambiguities are present. Such variations may be linked to a variety of political, historical, cultural or economic factors, the field emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s and at first was an almost exclusively British practice. Other early centers for the development of the field were in France, Germany, de Solla Price, Lucy Suchman and Anselm Strauss. Kuhn, but especially from established traditions in cultural anthropology as well as the later Wittgenstein, the weak programme is more of a description of an approach than an organised movement. The term is applied to historians, sociologists and philosophers of science who merely cite sociological factors as being responsible for those beliefs that went wrong, imre Lakatos and Thomas Kuhn might be said to adhere to it. The strong programme is particularly associated with the work of two groups, the Edinburgh School in the 1970s and 80s, and the Bath School in the same period, Edinburgh sociologists and Bath sociologists promoted, respectively, the Strong Programme and Empirical Programme of Relativism. It has made contributions in recent years to a critical analysis of the biosciences. Since Eugene Wigner raised the issue in 1960 and Hilary Putnam made it more rigorous in 1975, proposed solutions point out that the fundamental constituents of mathematical thought, space, form-structure, and number-proportion are also the fundamental constituents of physics. Fundamental contributions to the sociology of knowledge have been made by Sal Restivo. Restivo draws upon the work of such as Oswald Spengler, Raymond L. Wilder and Lesley A. White, as well as contemporary sociologists of knowledge. David Bloor draws upon Ludwig Wittgenstein and other contemporary thinkers and they both claim that mathematical knowledge is socially constructed and has irreducible contingent and historical factors woven into it. More recently Paul Ernest has proposed a social constructivist account of mathematical knowledge, SSK has received criticism from theorists of the Actor-network theory school of science and technology studies. These theorists criticise SSK for sociological reductionism and a human centered universe, SSK, they say, relies too heavily on human actors and social rules and conventions settling scientific controversies. The debate is discussed in an article Epistemological Chicken, Sociology of Scientific Knowledge Category Navigation. <see talk> Department of History and Philosophy of Science, baez, John, The Bogdanoff Affair Bloor, David Knowledge and social imagery. Studies In History and Philosophy of Science Part A Volume 30, Issue 1, March 1999, chu, Dominique, The Science Myth---God, society, the self and what we will never know, ISBN1782790470 Collins, H. M. The seven sexes, A study in the sociology of a phenomenon, or the replication of experiments in physics, Sociology,9, changing order, Replication and induction in scientific practice
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Social change
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Social change refers to an alteration in the social order of a society. Social change may include changes in nature, social institutions, social behaviours, Social change may refer to the notion of social progress or sociocultural evolution, the philosophical idea that society moves forward by dialectical or evolutionary means. It may refer to a change in the socio-economic structure, for instance a shift away from feudalism. Accordingly, it may refer to social revolution, such as the Socialist revolution presented in Marxism, or to other social movements. Social change may be driven by cultural, religious, economic, scientific or technological forces, Developmental psychology can play a role in social change. Social change comes about with tangible/intangible resource inputs as social investment. One source is random or unique factors such as climate, weather, for example, successful development has the same general requirements, such as a stable and flexible government, enough free and available resources, and a diverse social organization of society. On the whole, social change is usually a combination of systematic factors along with some random or unique factors, there are many theories of social change. Generally, a theory of change should include elements such as aspects of change, processes and mechanisms of social change. Hegelian, The classic Hegelian dialectic model of change is based on the interaction of opposing forces, starting from a point of momentary stasis, Thesis countered by Antithesis first yields conflict, then it subsequently results in a new Synthesis. Marxist, Marxism presents a dialectical and materialist concept of history, Heraclitan, The Greek philosopher Heraclitus used the metaphor of a river to speak of change thus, On those stepping into rivers staying the same other and other waters flow. What Heraclitus seems to be suggesting here, later interpretations notwithstanding, is that, in order for the river to remain the river, change must constantly be taking place. Thus one may think of the Heraclitan model as parallel to that of a living organism, a contemporary application of this approach is shown in the social change theory SEED-SCALE which builds off of the complexity theory subfield of Emergence. Daoist, The Chinese philosophical work Dao De Jing, I.8, water, although soft and yielding, will eventually wear away stone. Change in this model is to be natural, harmonious and steady, one of the most obvious changes currently occurring is the change in the relative global population distribution between countries. China and India continue to be the largest countries, followed by the US as a distant third, however, population growth throughout the world is slowing. Population growth among developed countries has been slowing since the 1950s, population growth among the less developed countries excluding the least developed has also been slowing, since 1960, and is now at 1. 3% annual growth. Population growth among the least developed countries has slowed relatively little, in much of the developed world, changes from distinct mens and womens work to more gender equal patterns have been economically important since the mid 20th century. Both men and women are to be considered to be contributors to social change world wide
42.
Social movement
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Social movements are a type of group action. They are large, sometimes informal, groupings of individuals or organizations which focus on political or social issues. In other words, they carry out, resist, or undo a social change, modern Western social movements became possible through education and increased mobility of labor due to the industrialization and urbanization of 19th century societies. However, others point out many of the social movements of the last hundred years grew up, like the Mau Mau in Kenya. Either way, social movements have been and continued to be connected with democratic political systems. Occasionally, social movements have been involved in democratizing nations, over the past 200 years, they have become part of a popular and global expression of dissent. Modern movements often utilize technology and the internet to people globally. Adapting to communication trends is a theme among successful movements. Research is beginning to explore how advocacy organizations linked to social movements in the U. S. and Canada use social media to facilitate civic engagement, the systematic literature review of Buettner & Buettner analyzed the role of Twitter during a wide range of social movements. Political science and sociology have developed a variety of theories and empirical research on social movements, there is no single consensus definition of a social movement. For Tilly, social movements are a vehicle for ordinary peoples participation in public politics. Sidney Tarrow defines a social movement as collective challenges by people with common purposes and solidarity in sustained interactions with elites, opponents and he specifically distinguishes social movements from political parties and advocacy groups. The first mass social movement catalyzed around the political figure. Charged with seditious libel, Wilkes was arrested after the issue of a general warrant, as a result of this episode, Wilkes became a figurehead to the growing movement for popular sovereignty among the middle classes - people began chanting, Wilkes and Liberty in the streets. After a later period of exile, brought about by further charges of libel and obscenity, Wilkes stood for the Parliamentary seat at Middlesex, where most of his support was located. When Wilkes was imprisoned in the Kings Bench Prison on 10 May 1768 and this was the first ever sustained social movement, -it involved public meetings, demonstrations, the distribution of pamphlets on an unprecedented scale and the mass petition march. The force and influence of social movement on the streets of London compelled the authorities to concede to the movements demands. Wilkes was returned to Parliament, general warrants were declared as unconstitutional, the Association had the support of leading Calvinist religious figures, including Rowland Hill, Erasmus Middleton, and John Rippon
43.
Social psychology (sociology)
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The primary methods of data collection are sample surveys, field observations, vignette studies, field experiments, and controlled experiments. The first textbook in psychology by a sociologist appeared in 1908—Social Psychology by Edward Alsworth Ross. The areas main journal was founded as Sociometry by Jacob L. Moreno in 1937, the journals name changed to Social Psychology in 1978, and to Social Psychology Quarterly in 1979. One of the currents of theory in this area sprang from work by philosopher. Mead generally is credited as the founder of symbolic interactionism, meads colleague and disciple at Chicago, sociologist Herbert Blumer, coined the name of the framework in 1937. During his 41-year tenure at Harvard, Bales mentored a group of sociological social psychologists concerned with group processes. Contemporary symbolic interactionism originated out of ideas of George Herbert Mead, in this framework meanings are constructed during social interaction, and constructed meanings influence the process of social interaction. Many symbolic interactionists see the self as a core meaning constructed through social relations, identity theory, affect control theory, and the Iowa School are major programs of research in this tradition. Process symbolic interactionism stems from the Chicago School and considers the meanings underlying social interactions to be situated, creative, fluid, researchers in this tradition frequently use qualitative and ethnographic methods. The approach is presented in detail by The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, Social exchange theory emphasizes the idea that social action is the result of personal choices made in order to maximize benefits and minimize costs. A key component of theory is the postulation of the comparison level of alternatives. Theories of social exchange share many features with classical economic theories like rational choice theory. However, social exchange theories differ from economic theories by making predictions about the relationships between persons, and not just the evaluation of goods, expectation states theory argues that individuals make use of any information available to them to create performance expectations for other actors. Differences in power and prestige are associated with status characteristics providing perceived structural advantage over others with limited access to resources. The theory has been used to describe the enactment of gender inequality and this research perspective deals with relationships between large-scale social systems and individual behaviors and mental states including feelings, attitudes and values, and mental faculties. Some researchers focus on issues of health and how social networks bring useful social support to the ill, another line of research deals with how education, occupation, and other components of social class impact values. Some studies assess emotional variations, especially in happiness versus alienation and anger, Social influence is a factor in every individuals life. Social influence takes place when ones thoughts, actions and feelings are affected by other people and it is a way of interaction that affects individual behavior and can occur within groups and between groups
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Social stratification
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Social stratification is a societys categorization of people into socioeconomic strata, based upon their occupation and income, wealth and social status, or derived power. As such, stratification is the social position of persons within a social group, category, geographic region. The upper-stratum, the middle-stratum, and the lower stratum, moreover, a social stratum can be formed upon the bases of kinship or caste, or both. Determining the structures of social stratification arises from inequalities of status among persons, therefore, generally, the greater the social complexity of a society, the more social strata exist, by way of social differentiation. Social stratification is a used in the social sciences to describe the relative social position of persons in a given social group, category. In modern Western societies, stratification is often classified into three major divisions of social class, upper class, middle class, and lower class. Each of these classes can be subdivided into smaller classes. Social strata may also be delineated on the basis of kinship ties or caste relations, the concept of social stratification is often used and interpreted differently within specific theories. So-called conflict theories, such as Marxism, point to the inaccessibility of resources, talcott Parsons, an American sociologist, asserted that stability and social order are regulated, in part, by universal values. Such values are not identical with consensus but can as well be an impetus for ardent social conflict as it has multiple times through history. Parsons never claimed that universal values, in and by themselves, indeed, the constitution of society is a much more complicated codification of emerging historical factors. Theorists such as Ralf Dahrendorf alternately note the tendency toward an enlarged middle-class in modern Western societies due to the necessity of a workforce in technological economies. Various social and political perspectives concerning globalization, such as dependency theory, four principles are posited to underlie social stratification. First, social stratification is socially defined as a property of a society rather than individuals in that society, second, social stratification is reproduced from generation to generation. Third, social stratification is universal but variable, fourth, social stratification involves not just quantitative inequality but qualitative beliefs and attitudes about social status. Although stratification is not limited to complex societies, all complex societies exhibit features of stratification, the term stratification system is sometimes used to refer to the complex social relationships and social structure that generate these observed inequalities. Social mobility is the movement of individuals, social groups or categories of people between the layers or strata in a stratification system and this movement can be intragenerational or intergenerational. Such mobility is used to classify different systems of social stratification
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