Sociology

**Sociology** is a social science that studies societies and how humans act in groups. (A society is the community of people living in a particular country or region and having shared customs, laws, and organizations.)

There are many subfields. For example, criminology examines criminal behavior and crime. People who study sociology are called sociologists.

## Sociology today

Sociologists research the structures that organize society, such as racial categorizations, ethnicity, gender, social class, the family, and social interaction. They also study the breakdown of social structures (for example, crime and divorce).

### Subfields

Most sociologists work in one or more specialty areas or "subfields". Sociology includes many subfields that examine different aspects of society. For example:

- Social stratification experts study patterns of inequality and class structure in society
- The field of demography studies changes in population size or type
- Criminology examines criminal behavior and crime
- Political sociology studies government and laws.
- Sociology of race and sociology of gender examine how people think about race and gender.

### Research

Many sociologists also do research outside of university settings. Their research is intended to help teachers, lawmakers, and government administrators to make better institutions, government programs, and rules.

### Statistics

Sociologists often use statistics to count and measure patterns in how people behave. Sociologists also interview people or hold group discussions to find out why people behave in certain ways. Some sociologists combine different research methods.

## History of sociology

Social analysis has been done since the time of Plato. However, sociology was not accepted as a type of science until the early 1800s. At the time, European cities were industrializing and changing drastically. Many people moved into cities and began working in factories. Sociologists tried to understand how people and groups interacted in these reorganized societies. Themes included community, authority, status, alienation and lack of power.

The word "sociology" was invented by French thinker Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès in 1780. Early thinkers who wrote about sociology included Auguste Comte and Max Weber.

Sociology was taught as a university subject for the first time at the University of Kansas in 1890. A few years after, in 1895, Émile Durkheim founded the first European department of sociology at the University of Bordeaux.

The first sociology department to be established in Britain was at the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1904. In 1919, a sociology department was established in Germany at the University of Munich (LMU Munich) by Max Weber.

## Related pages

- Political economy
- Anthropology
- Social philosophy
- Social psychology
- Social sciences
- Social structure
- Sociolinguistics
- Sociological imagination
- Structural functionalism
- Marxism

## Further reading

- Babbie, Earl R. 2003. _The Practice of Social Research_, 10th edition. Wadsworth, Thomson Learning Inc.,
- Giddens, Anthony. 2006. _Sociology_ (5th edition), Polity, Cambridge.
- Nisbet, Robert A. 1967. _The Sociological Tradition_, London,

## Other websites

- An insight to Human Sociology