This course is designed as an introduction to the discipline of sociology.
Sociology understands and explains human behaviors as a result of social and cultural contexts.
Sociologists think that social and cultural contexts play more important role in shaping human behavior than do biological, psychological or economic factors. Although all these factors do play a part, sociologists concentrate on the social and cultural contexts. From the very beginnings of sociology in the middle of the 18th century, sociologists tried to understand how these four socio-historical developments affect other human relationships, both in groups and as individuals and how individuals, in turn, shape some of these great social transformations. In this course you will learn about these fundamental processes of social change, about basic ideas of sociology, and about the names and ideas of the most prominent sociologists. Taken together all this makes up the vocabulary and the language of sociology, which this course introduces.