DEFINE WHAT IS SOCIOLOGY.

WHAT IS SOCIOLOGY

Introduction

Various studies define sociology as the scientific study of human groups that provides the tools needed for understanding how society works (Durkheim, 2014). Besides that modern day sociology helps scholar know of the impacts that social intuitions have on individual lives, and the challenges which individuals in their daily interactions. Sociology has various branches some which look into organizations and family life, crime to education, the division of social class to race and the shared beliefs in culture, that cover wealth and up to poverty (Van Krieken, et al., 2013).

Body

As previously stated sociology is a science that covers various subjects, that includes politics psychology and economics or social sciences. This notion of sociology being considered as a science however poses certain problems since the phrase science goes in hand with the study of the natural world, where subjects such as biology, physics and chemistry form the natural sciences (Lash, 2014). Nonetheless, while studying society, sociologists come up with wide range of problems that are not present in natural sciences. The variance between sociology and natural sciences makes sociologists not to follow exactly the same procedures like those of the natural sciences. In spite of this, sociology can still be explained as taking a scientific approach towards the study of society so long as there is objectivity and freedom (Kendall, 2012).

Sociology builds on creating a relationship between what happens to people in their lives and the extensive processes of social, political and economic change that may lie underneath these happenings. Sociologists encourage people to find social processes and structures which show generalised pattern of private troubles thus turning these troubles into public issues from where they can come up with solutions. For instance the case of unemployment where when one person is unemployed, it turns into a private trouble but when two million are unemployed, it becomes a public issue. Another scenario comes from fertility where when one couple fails to produce children it becomes a private issue but when a huge number of couples share a similar fate it turns into a public issue labelled as the declining rate of fertility (Van Krieken, et al., 2013).

Sociology gives people a chance to see the world from a different perspective. In places such as the United States where individualism is the order of the day, it is easy to overlook the fact that the way people behave is socially produced (Mulkay, 2014). Whether they are within family boundaries friendships, socioeconomic classes, church groups or complex organizations a huge part of life is socially constructed thus creating the basic idea of sociology (Mulkay, 2014).

Studies indicate that sociology may help to liberate people from themselves. This in essence means that sociology can help people to take full control of their lives by bringing them closer to their situation in society and the forces which are acting on them. Through the simple means of discovering how works in society, people get to know how an understanding various process takes place. Thus sociology gives wisdom to its partakers where they will know that things are not what they seem (Brake, 2013).

Sociology traces its roots to various centuries ago when it helped theorist to anticipate for most issues which affected society and caused a divide, something which still lives on up to today. Early social scientists came up with theories of social functioning even before scientific tools were created to study the social phenomena. For instance, social trends such as the greater interdependence in people and economies, division of labour, increase in growth of technology and need for people to adapt, loss of community and the increased sense of isolation were all envisioned by early sociologists such as Émile Durkheim, Max Weber and Daniel Bell (Lash, 2014).

A recent study described sociology as the planned or organized study of social life and human groups in modern societies. Moreover it was a study which was much into understanding various institutions. For instance, the family institution which is more concerned with the arrangements of marriage, like at what age individuals can marry, who they can marry or the number of partners which they can have and if so what about the upbringing of their children (Van Krieken, et al., 2013).

The education system creates a way of passing on knowledge, skills and attitudes from one generation to the other. The economic system or work organizes the way for the production of goods which will be transferred to the society at large while religious institutions dwell on people’s relations to the supernatural (Douglas, 2013). All these are the elements of the social institutions that contribute to the society’s social structure as well as being the primary building block of society. Sociology tries to comprehend how the different social institutions work, and how they relate to each another, such as what influence the family could have on how well the child performs in the education system (Brake, 2013).

Conclusion

By normal standards various things do take place within society. One group of people will be rich while the other poor, one group might be of a different race from the other but the end of it all there is a science behind this. Sociology looks into such events and creates an idea why the events first took place and if bad to society how it can be solved.

References

Brake, M. (2013). Comparative youth culture: The sociology of youth cultures and youth subcultures in America, Britain and Canada. New York: Routledge.

Douglas, M. (2013). Essays on the Sociology of Perception. New York : Routledge.

Durkheim, E. (2014). The rules of sociological method: and selected texts on sociology and its method. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Kendall, D. (2012). Sociology in our times. New York: Cengage Learning.

Lash, S. (2014). Sociology of postmodernism. New York: Routledge.

Mulkay, M. (2014). Science and the Sociology of Knowledge. . New York: Routledge.

Van Krieken, R., Habibis, D., Smith, P., Hutchins, B., Martin, G., & Maton, K. (2013). Sociology. Sydney: Pearson Higher Education AU.

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