Sociology[edit]

Main articles: Sociology and Outline of sociology

Émile Durkheim is considered one of the founding fathers of sociology.

Sociology is the systematic study of society, individuals' relationship to their societies, the
consequences of difference, and other aspects of human social action.[30] The meaning of the word
comes from the suffix "-logy", which means "study of", derived from Ancient Greek, and the stem
"soci-", which is from the Latin word socius, meaning "companion", or society in general.
Auguste Comte (1798–1857) coined the term, Sociology, as a way to apply natural science
principles and techniques to the social world in 1838. [31][32] Comte endeavoured to unify history,
psychology and economics through the descriptive understanding of the social realm. He proposed
that social ills could be remedied through sociological positivism, an epistemological approach
outlined in The Course in Positive Philosophy [1830–1842] and A General View of Positivism (1844).
Though Comte is generally regarded as the "Father of Sociology", the discipline was formally
established by another French thinker, Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), who developed positivism as a
foundation to practical social research. Durkheim set up the first European department of sociology
at the University of Bordeaux in 1895, publishing his Rules of the Sociological Method. In 1896, he
established the journal L'Année Sociologique. Durkheim's seminal monograph, Suicide (1897), a
case study of suicide rates among Catholic and Protestant populations, distinguished sociological
analysis from psychology or philosophy.[33]
Karl Marx rejected Comte's positivism but nevertheless aimed to establish a science of
society based on historical materialism, becoming recognized as a founding figure of sociology
posthumously as the term gained broader meaning. Around the start of the 20th century, the first
wave of German sociologists, including Max Weber and Georg Simmel, developed
sociological antipositivism. The field may be broadly recognized as an amalgam of three modes of
social thought in particular: Durkheimian positivism and structural functionalism; Marxist historical
materialism and conflict theory; and Weberian antipositivism and verstehen analysis. American
sociology broadly arose on a separate trajectory, with little Marxist influence, an emphasis on
rigorous experimental methodology, and a closer association with pragmatism and social
psychology. In the 1920s, the Chicago school developed symbolic interactionism. Meanwhile, in the
1930s, the Frankfurt School pioneered the idea of critical theory, an interdisciplinary form of Marxist
sociology drawing upon thinkers as diverse as Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche. Critical
theory would take on something of a life of its own after World War II, influencing literary
criticism and the Birmingham School establishment of cultural studies.
Sociology evolved as an academic response to the challenges of modernity, such
as industrialization, urbanization, secularization, and a perceived process of
enveloping rationalization.[34] The field generally concerns the social rules and processes that bind
and separate people not only as individuals, but as members
of associations, groups, communities and institutions, and includes the examination of the
organization and development of human social life. The sociological field of interest ranges from the
analysis of short contacts between anonymous individuals on the street to the study of global social
processes. In the terms of sociologists Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, social scientists
seek an understanding of the Social Construction of Reality. Most sociologists work in one or
more subfields. One useful way to describe the discipline is as a cluster of sub-fields that examine
different dimensions of society. For example, social stratification studies inequality and class
structure; demography studies changes in a population size or type; criminology examines criminal
behaviour and deviance; and political sociology studies the interaction between society and state.
Since its inception, sociological epistemologies, methods, and frames of enquiry, have significantly
expanded and diverged.[35] Sociologists use a diversity of research methods, collect both quantitative
and qualitative data, draw upon empirical techniques, and engage critical theory.[32] Common modern
methods include case studies, historical research, interviewing, participant observation, social
network analysis, survey research, statistical analysis, and model building, among other approaches.
Since the late 1970s, many sociologists have tried to make the discipline useful for purposes beyond
the academy. The results of sociological research aid educators, lawmakers, administrators,
developers, and others interested in resolving social problems and formulating public policy, through
subdisciplinary areas such as evaluation research, methodological assessment, and public
sociology.
In the early 1970s, women sociologists began to question sociological paradigms and the invisibility
of women in sociological studies, analysis, and courses.[36] In 1969, feminist sociologists challenged
the discipline's androcentrism at the American Sociological Association's annual conference. [37] This
led to the founding of the organization Sociologists for Women in Society, and, eventually, a new
sociology journal, Gender & Society. Today, the sociology of gender is considered to be one of the
most prominent sub-fields in the discipline.
New sociological sub-fields continue to appear — such as community studies, computational
sociology, environmental sociology, network analysis, actor-network theory, gender studies, and a
growing list, many of which are cross-disciplinary in nature.[38]

Additional fields of study[edit]

Additional applied or interdisciplinary fields related to the social sciences include:

 Archaeology is the science that studies human cultures through the recovery,
documentation, analysis, and interpretation of material remains and environmental data,
including architecture, artifacts, features, biofacts, and landscapes.
 Area studies are interdisciplinary fields of research and scholarship pertaining to particular
geographical, national/federal, or cultural regions.
 Behavioural science is a term that encompasses all the disciplines that explore the activities
of and interactions among organisms in the natural world.
 Computational social science is an umbrella field encompassing computational approaches
within the social sciences.
 Demography is the statistical study of all human populations.
 Development studies a multidisciplinary branch of social science that addresses issues of
concern to developing countries.
 Environmental social science is the broad, transdisciplinary study of interrelations between
humans and the natural environment.
 Environmental studies integrate social, humanistic, and natural science perspectives on the
relation between humans and the natural environment.
 Gender studies integrates several social and natural sciences to study gender identity,
masculinity, femininity, transgender issues, and sexuality.
 Information science is an interdisciplinary science primarily concerned with the collection,
classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information.
 International studies covers both International relations (the study of foreign affairs
and global issues among states within the international system) and International education (the
comprehensive approach that intentionally prepares people to be active and engaged
participants in an interconnected world).
 Legal management is a social sciences discipline that is designed for students interested in
the study of state and legal elements.
 Library science is an interdisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools
of management, information technology, education, and other areas to libraries; the collection,
organization, preservation and dissemination of information resources; and the political economy
of information.
 Management consists of various levels of leadership and administration of an organization in
all business and human organizations. It is the effective execution of getting people together to
accomplish desired goals and objectives through adequate planning, executing and controlling
activities.
 Marketing the identification of human needs and wants, defines and measures their
magnitude for demand and understanding the process of consumer buying behaviour to
formulate products and services, pricing, promotion and distribution to satisfy these needs and
wants through exchange processes and building long-term relationships.
 Political economy is the study of production, buying and selling, and their relations with law,
custom, and government.
 Public administration is one of the main branches of political science, and can be broadly
described as the development, implementation and study of branches of government policy. The
pursuit of the public good by enhancing civil society and social justice is the ultimate goal of the
field. Though public administration has been historically referred to as government management,
[39]
 it increasingly encompasses non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that also operate with a
similar, primary dedication to the betterment of humanity.
 Religious studies and Western esoteric studies incorporate and inform social-scientific
research on phenomena broadly deemed religious. Religious studies, Western esoteric studies,
and the social sciences developed in dialogue with one another. [40]