Sociology

What is Sociology?

•  sociology is a social science that studies human societies, their interactions, and the processes that preserve and change them.
•  It does this by examining the dynamics of constituent parts of societies such as institutions, communities, populations, and gender, racial or age group.
• Sociology also studies social status or stratification, social movements, and social changes, as well as societal disorder in the form of crime, deviance and revolution.

Why study Sociology?

• Sociology can give you a new perspective on yourself and the world around you.

• It is called the sociological perspective.

• The sociological perspective helps us understand that people behavior is influenced by social factors and learned behaviors from those around us.

Sociological Perspective

The sociological perspective invites us to look at our familiar surroundings in a fresh way. It encourages us to take a new look at the world we have always taken for granted, to examine our social environment with the same curiosity that we might bring to an exotic foreign culture. 

 Functionalist perspective

The functionalist perspective is based largely on the works of Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons, and Robert Merton. According to functionalism, society is a system of interconnected parts that work together in harmony to maintain a state of balance and social equilibrium for the whole. 

Conflict perspective

The conflict perspective is a view of society that posits conflict as a normal feature of social life.

 Interactionist perspective

In sociology, interactionism is a theoretical perspective that derives social processes (such as conflict, cooperation, identity formation) from human interaction. It is the study of how individuals shape society and are shaped by society through meaning that arises in interactions.