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Learn
Reading Activity: Why Study Sociology?
We are all members of society. Studying society gives us insight into our world; we gain an awareness of why we may live as we do. Sociology is also important because as a young person you may see things in the world that you want to change. Just like understanding how an automobile works is important if you want to fix your car, understanding how society works is a necessary prerequisite for social change. Sociology gives us the tools we need to see the world as it is and the tools we may need to fix it!
For example, if poverty and homelessness are social problems that concern you, Sociology can help. Sociology can help you to understand why income inequality exists and why there may be members of our society who are left to struggle. Only then are you armed with the insights you need to combat this social problem.
Lesson Presentation
What is Sociology?
In this lesson presentation, you will discover what sociology is and what it isn't! Right from the beginning of this course, you will want to think like a sociologist. Consistent with that objective will be the precise use of sociological jargon.
The presentation below introduces us to the field of sociology. After the presentation consider how you might benefit from taking this course.
Let's start by exploring what sociology is. It seems like a reasonable place to start. Well, sociology is the study of society. It's the study of how we, human beings, interact in groups. Sociology does not mean the same thing as society. Rather it is the study of society.
Now, this might be a little confusing, but try and follow this because it isn't a state that you may run into. Sometimes journalists or other people writing about sociological studies or discoveries may incorrectly use the terms sociology and society or social and sociological interchangeably, and that is incorrect. And what I want you to do right from the beginning of this course is to think like a sociologist. So social is the adjective that refers to society. And sociological refers to sociology, or the study of society.
For example, sociological research may study or explore social problems. Let me plug-in a concrete example there. Crime is a social problem. There are sociologists who specialize in studying crime, so they do sociological research into the social problem from crime. Crime is not a sociological problem. It's a social problem.
So sociology is also what we refer to as a social science. Social sciences study human behavior and human society, but besides sociology, some other social sciences that you may have heard of or studied before include psychology, economics, history, anthropology, and political science. Those other social sciences look at a segment of human behavior in society.
For example, economics. Economics looks at how people produce goods and services and distribute those goods and services, or how human beings make the best use of their available resources. So that's one aspect of social behavior. What the sociologist does is they take a broader view. So they look at human behavior across the spectrum of society, the kinds of behaviors that occur in government. Economics and rational choice theory is something that sociologists and economists consider. Microsociology takes and borrows a lot from the field of psychology.
We look at often history and culture to help us understand society. So sociology integrates or brings together the other social sciences. Sociologists see the connection between those other studies and that makes it a harder study, and maybe a tad more interesting.
Because sociology is a social science, we are going to look at empirical arguments. And empirical, the adjective empirical refers to what can be proven or disproven through experiments or observations. Sociologists just don't publish their opinions without supporting them, without having gathered data or conducted experiments or both to support their findings. So again, they conduct experiments, collect data, and then they analyze that data. They approach society as scientists.
Objectivity. Being objective means not having a bias. It's important and it's foundational. It's the very foundation of the study of sociology, as matter of fact you can lose a lot of credibility as a sociologist if your studies have a bias, if they're not conducted in a valid way. If your research is not valid, you won't get published, for example. In sociological journals you won't be taken seriously.
So again, objectivity is really important. In this course, you're going to be exposed to different points of view that you may not agree with and that's OK. That's part of thinking like a sociologist. Now when you encounter a position you do not agree with, you want to stop and think about the reasons why you doubt. And you may think about the kind of research you might conduct, the kind of data you would gather or experiment you might do that would help you figure out whether or not your hypothesis or your best educated guess about why something occurs in society, you know, whether or not you're correct.
You have to be open, though, to finding out that you're wrong. And sociologists will often start a study with a hypothesis and find out that they were wrong and then they need to report that finding. So empirical evidence is key to the study of sociology, and that's where we'll stop this.
