Sociology What is Sociology?

What we call sociology is one of several related fields known as the social sciences. They share the same subject matter: human behavior. They are called social sciences because the human is not a solitary beast. Our daily lives intertwine with the lives of others – what we do, even much of what we hope, is influenced by those around us. To study ourselves, we must study our social relations. In fact, as we shall see in Chapter 6, the process by which newborn infants are transformed into competent adults is called socialization. Learning to speak, learning to control our impulses, or even learning to play games is learning how to be social.

Despite their common subject matter, there are a number of different social sciences. Psychologists, economists, anthropologists, criminologists, political scientists, and even many historians, as well as sociologists, are social scientists. Divisions among these fields are often hazy. Indeed, sometimes it is impossible to tell which field a social scientist’s work belongs in. The field may be determined merely by the university department in which the person is trained or employed. Nevertheless, the following rules of thumb may help you to distinguish sociologists from other social scientists.

Sociologists differ from psychologists because we are not concerned so exclusively with the individual, with what goes on inside people’s heads; we are more interested in what goes on between people. Sociologists differ from economists by being less exclusively interested in commercial exchanges; we are equally interested in the exchange of intangibles such as love and affection. We differ from anthropologists primarily because the latter specialize in the study of preliterate or primitive human groups, while we are primarily interested in modern industrial societies. And while most criminologists are trained in and employed in sociology departments, they specialize in illegal behavior, while sociologists are interested in the whole range of human behavior. Similarly, political scientists focus on political organization and activity, while sociologists survey all social organizations. Finally, sociologists share with historians an interest in the past but are equally interested in the present and the future.

As these contrasts make evident, sociology is a broader discipline than the other social sciences. In a sense, the specialty of sociologists is generalization: to find the connections that unite the various social sciences into a comprehensive, integrated science of society. When I had to decide which social science to pursue, I chose sociology precisely because of its greater scope and grander aspirations. Moreover, to be a sociologist is to be free to do psychology, economics, anthropology, political science, criminology, or history as the need arises.

A Sociological Consciousness

More than 2,300 years ago Aristotle wrote: “The human is by nature a social animal.” Put another way, you may be many things, but above all you are a social creature destined to live your life with other people in society. Your relationships with others lie at the core of your existence. You were conceived within a relationship, were born into relationships, became genuinely human in relationships, and live your life within relationships. In brief, you cannot be human all by yourself. What you think, how you feel, and what you say and do are fashioned by your interaction with other people in group settings. It is web of meanings, expectations, behavior, and institutional arrangements that result when people interact with one another in society that is the stuff of sociology. Let us define sociology as the scientific study of society, and more particularly, as the study of human organization.

Human beings have long had an interest in understanding themselves and their social arrangements. Judging by ancient folklore, myths, and archeological remains, they gave pondered why people of other societies order their lives differently than themselves. They have wondered why some members of society violate social rules. They have questioned why some people should be wealthy and powerful and others poor and powerless. And they have been bewildered and troubled by episodes of mass hysteria, revolution, and war. It seems that our species wants to understand what life means, and how it has come about. At first human beings developed and applied the scientific method for the study of physical and biological phenomena. It has been only in the past 150 years or so that they have turned to science for an explanation of their behavior. This science – sociology – pursues the study of society through research governed by the rigorous and disciplined collection and analysis of facts.