Areas of Sociology

The term sociology was coined by August Comte in the nineteenth century from the Latin
word socios(companion with others) and the Greek word logos (study of reason) to describe
the new science of social life.
For purposes of scientific investigation, sociology as a discipline is divided into several areas. These
are:
1. Social Organization This refers to social institutions, social groups, social inequality, social
mobility, religious groups, and bureaucracy.These are the examples of social organizations: social
institutions, social groups, social inequality, religious groups and bureaucracy.
Social Institution- Family and School
Social Groups- Farmers Association and Professional Associations
Social Inequality- Unemployed ,peasants, and poor people
Religious Groups- Catholic, Protestants and Muslims
Bureaucracy- Government Agencies and Local government Units
2. Social Psychology This refers to human nature and its focus on social processes as they affect
the individual. The observations in their emotions, attitudes, perceptions and culture in ther
community, school market and church.
3. Social Change This studies ecological changes, population, migration, technological change,
new production techniques, culture change, political processes, social transformation,
modernization, mass communication, and the impact of natural disaster.
The Point of Inquiry in Social Change
A.Ecological Change
Why are there so many diseases that occur now a day?
As a nursing student, what can you do to prevent these diseases?
Why there is global warming?
B.Migration
Why do people migrate?
C.Technological change

 What are the technologies in the 80s?

What are the new technologies now?
D.New production
What are the things that man produce?
E,Culture Change
What are the fading values that we have now?
F.Political Processes
What political activities you are joining?
G.Social Transformation
What are the good and bad ways of having social transformation?
H.Mass Communication
Do you think television and computers strongly influence the behavior of the people?
4. Population This studies size, growth, demographic characteristics, as well as corruption,
migration, changes vis--vis economic, political and social systems.
Question: What do you mean by population growth and demographic characteristics?
5.Applied Sociology This is concerned with resolving social problems through sociological
research.
Question: What are the social problems of our society?

Squatters, prostitution, large family size, migration of nurses, and poor nutrition .

SQUATTERS. Those who are living in the squatter area, what might be the reason for them to
migrate in the urban area or in the city? What are the research variables when we study this
problem?
Those people living in a certain area but they do not own the land. For the sociological research to
solve the problem of squatters , what is the reason for them to migrate in the city? The research
variables to study the problem of squatting are the background on employment, educational
qualifications, occupation and source of income.
The migration of the city is to find gainful employment for the family. However, they cannot find a job
that suit there educational qualifications. They are usually farmers, fishermen, laborers on unskilled
workers. The low income of the people is still the main reason why they cannot afford to buy their
own house and lot.

PROSTITUTION. Do you think prostitution and squatting have the same research variables as social
problems? Usually those who are living in squatter areas are also the breeding ground for
prostitution even drug abuse and illegal gambling. The research variables may still on low income
and unemployment. The given research variables for squatters have the same reason for this social
problems.
MIGRATION OF NURSES. What might be the reason why nurses would like to work in other
countries? The high salary and lucrative remunerations for nurses who are working in Europe ,USA,
Canada and Australia. As compared with the Staff Nurse who is working in government hospital they
are only receiving meager salary which is 10 times higher once you work in other country.
The research variables to study the migration of nurses are the salary, overtime pay, exchange rate (
Peso-Dollar) and the country that they want to work.
POOR NUTRITION. Who are usually affected by poor nutrition? The children have usually the
problem of malnutrition. The research variables are the income of the family, food intake,
employment and occupation of the family. The usual cause of poor nutrition is the result of low
income and unemployment in the family.
6. Sociological Theory and Research This is a set of statements that seeks to explain problems,
actions or behavior; or the discovery and development of research that tests the validity, applicability
and usefulness of the results of the investigation for the improvement of life

History of Sociology
Sociology has a relatively short history. The systematic study
of "patterns of behavior" began in the early part of the 19th
century in France, and then appeared in other European societies
and the United States as that century progressed.
Why did sociology appear at that time and place?
Answer: there was a need to understand the rapid social
changes that were occurring throughout these societies as they
experienced dramatic political, economic, and social upheavals.
What was happening in France around 1800?

There was a great desire to know what was happening, why it

was happening, and where it was leading. Were these changes
beneficial ones? Were they harmful ones? Could anything be
done to influence the course of change? These were the central
questions that all the founders of sociology addressed.

Founders of Sociology
Person/Orientation
August Comte

"The Liberal"

Key Concepts/Short Excerpts

"Sociology", Positivism
Excerpt from Positive Philosophy (1830-42)
"The Positive Philosophy offers the only solid basis for
that Social Reorganization which must succeed the critical
condition in which the most civilized nations are now
living.... It alone has been advancing during a course of
centuries throughout which the others have been declining.
The fact is incontestable. Some may deplore it, but none
can destroy it, nor therefore neglect it but under penalty of
being betrayed by illusory speculations. This general
revolution of the human mind is nearly accomplished. We
have only to complete the Positive Philosophy by bringing
Social phenomena within its comprehension, and
afterward consolidating the whole into one body of
homogeneous doctrine. The marked preference which
almost all minds, from the highest to the commonest,
accord to positive knowledge over vague and mystical
conceptions, is a pledge of what the reception of this
philosophy will be when it has acquired the only quality
that it now wantsa character of due generality. When it
has become complete, its supremacy will take place
spontaneously. and will re-establish order throughout
society." click for more...

Herbert Spencer

"The Conservative"

Karl Marx

"The Radical"

Evolution, "Survival of Fittest"

Excerpt from The Principles of Sociology, Vol. 1 (1876)
"Society is an organism... It undergoes continuous growth;
as it grows, its parts, becoming unlike, exhibit increase of
structure; the unlike parts simultaneously assume activities
of unlike kinds; these activities are not simply different,
but their differences are so related as to make one another
possible; the reciprocal aid thus given causes mutual
dependence of the parts; and the mutually dependent parts,
living by and for one another, form an aggregate
constituted on the same general principle as an individual
organism. The analogy of a society to an organism
becomes still clearer on learning that every organism of
appreciable size is a society; and on further learning that in
both, the lives of the units continue for some time if the
life of the aggregate is suddenly arrested, while if the
aggregate is not destroyed by violence its life greatly
exceeds in duration the lives of its units. Though the two
are contrasted as respectively discrete and concrete, and
though there results a difference in the ends subserved by
the organization, there does not result a difference in the
laws of the organization: the required mutual influences of
the parts, not transmissible in a direct way, being
transmitted in an indirect way." click for more...

Class, Revolution, Dialectical

Materialism
Excerpt from The Communist Manifesto (1848):
"The history of all hitherto existing society is the history
of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and
plebian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a
word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant
opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted,
now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended,
either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large,
or in the common ruin of the contending classes....
It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face
of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their
tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of
communism with a manifesto of the party itself....
In short, the Communists everywhere support every

revolutionary movement against the existing social and

political order of things. In all these movements, they
bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the
property question, no matter what its degree of
development at the time. Finally, they labor everywhere
for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of
all countries. The Communists disdain to conceal their
views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be
attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing
social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a
communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to
lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Working men of all countries, unite!" click for more...
Emile Durkheim

"The Scientist"

Social Fact, Anomie

Excerpts from The Rules of the Sociological
Method (1893)
"Before beginning the search for the method appropriate to
the study of social facts it is important to know what are
the facts termed 'social'. .. When I perform my duties as a
brother, a husband or a citizen and carry out the
commitments I have entered into, I fulfill obligations
which are defined in law and custom and which are
external to myself and my actions. Even when they
conform to my own sentiments and when I feel their
reality within me, that reality does not cease to be
objective, for it is not I who have prescribed these duties; I
have received them through education... Here, then, is a
category of facts which present very special
characteristics: they consist of manners of acting, thinking
and feeling external to the individual, which are invested
with a coercive power by virtue of which they exercise
control over him. Consequently, since they consist of
representations and actions, they cannot be confused with
organic phenomena, nor with psychical phenomena, which
have no existence save in and through the individual
consciousness. Thus they constitute a new species and to
them must be exclusively assigned the term social.

The Founders of Sociology

Each field of academic study has its own cast of characters, and sociology is no
exception. Although countless individuals have contributed to sociology's development
into a social science, several individuals deserve special mention.

Auguste Comte
The French philosopher Auguste Comte (17981857)often called the father of
sociologyfirst used the term sociology in 1838 to refer to the scientific study of
society. He believed that all societies develop and progress through the following
stages: religious, metaphysical, and scientific. Comte argued that society needs
scientific knowledge based on facts and evidence to solve its problemsnot speculation
and superstition, which characterize the religious and metaphysical stages of social
development. Comte viewed the science of sociology as consisting of two
branches: dynamics, or the study of the processes by which societies change;
and statics, or the study of the processes by which societies endure. He also
envisioned sociologists as eventually developing a base of scientific social knowledge
that would guide society into positive directions.

Herbert Spencer
The 19thcentury Englishman Herbert Spencer (18201903) compared society to a
living organism with interdependent parts. Change in one part of society causes change
in the other parts, so that every part contributes to the stability and survival of society
as a whole. If one part of society malfunctions, the other parts must adjust to the crisis
and contribute even more to preserve society. Family, education, government, industry,
and religion comprise just a few of the parts of the organism of society.
Spencer suggested that society will correct its own defects through the natural process
of survival of the fittest. The societal organism naturally leans toward homeostasis,
or balance and stability. Social problems work themselves out when the government
leaves society alone. The fittestthe rich, powerful, and successfulenjoy their
status because nature has selected them to do so. In contrast, nature has doomed
the unfitthe poor, weak, and unsuccessfulto failure. They must fend for
themselves without social assistance if society is to remain healthy and even progress
to higher levels. Governmental interference in the natural order of society weakens
society by wasting the efforts of its leadership in trying to defy the laws of nature.

Karl Marx
Not everyone has shared Spencer's vision of societal harmony and stability. Chief
among those who disagreed was the German political philosopher and economistKarl
Marx (18181883), who observed society's exploitation of the poor by the rich and
powerful. Marx argued that Spencer's healthy societal organism was a falsehood.
Rather than interdependence and stability, Marx claimed that social conflict, especially
class conflict, and competition mark all societies.
The class of capitalists that Marx called the bourgeoisie particularly enraged him.
Members of the bourgeoisie own the means of production and exploit the class of
laborers, called the proletariat, who do not own the means of production. Marx
believed that the very natures of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat inescapably lock
the two classes in conflict. But he then took his ideas of class conflict one step further:
He predicted that the laborers are not selectively unfit, but are destined to overthrow
the capitalists. Such a class revolution would establish a classfree society in which all
people work according to their abilities and receive according to their needs.
Unlike Spencer, Marx believed that economics, not natural selection, determines the
differences between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. He further claimed that a
society's economic system decides peoples' norms, values, mores, and religious beliefs,
as well as the nature of the society's political, governmental, and educational systems.
Also unlike Spencer, Marx urged people to take an active role in changing society rather
than simply trusting it to evolve positively on its own.

Emile Durkheim
Despite their differences, Marx, Spencer, and Comte all acknowledged the importance of
using science to study society, although none actually used scientific methods. Not
until Emile Durkheim (18581917) did a person systematically apply scientific
methods to sociology as a discipline. A French philosopher and sociologist, Durkheim
stressed the importance of studying social facts, or patterns of behavior characteristic
of a particular group. The phenomenon of suicide especially interested Durkheim. But
he did not limit his ideas on the topic to mere speculation. Durkheim formulated his
conclusions about the causes of suicide based on the analysis of large amounts of
statistical data collected from various European countries.
Durkheim certainly advocated the use of systematic observation to study sociological
events, but he also recommended that sociologists avoid considering people's attitudes
when explaining society. Sociologists should only consider as objective evidence what
they themselves can directly observe. In other words, they must not concern
themselves with people's subjective experiences.

Max Weber
The German sociologist Max Weber (18641920) disagreed with the objective
evidence only position of Durkheim. He argued that sociologists must also consider
people's interpretations of eventsnot just the events themselves. Weber believed that
individuals' behaviors cannot exist apart from their interpretations of the meaning of
their own behaviors, and that people tend to act according to these interpretations.
Because of the ties between objective behavior and subjective interpretation, Weber
believed that sociologists must inquire into people's thoughts, feelings, and perceptions
regarding their own behaviors. Weber recommended that sociologists adopt his method
of Verstehen (vrst e hen), or empathetic understanding. Verstehen allows sociologists
to mentally put themselves into the other person's shoes and thus obtain an
interpretive understanding of the meanings of individuals' behaviors.