Have you ever wondered how the world of people works? Have you ever wondered how we know how to raise our hands, or why we go to college, or like certain music?
Sociology Is the Scientific Study of Society and Human Behavior
This might sound confusing because society is a really big thing. It’s things like whole cities, the economy, and politics, so what does all that have to do with our human behavior? It actually affects us a lot. A society is just a group of people who share a culture and territory. Culture is a part of everything we do. It molds our music taste, our scientific advances, and the way we interact with others. Sociology is a broad field!
Sociology Is Looking for Patterns
Sociology is about looking for recurring characteristics or events, but it looks for all kinds of patterns in all kinds of places. This scope is what sets it apart from other social sciences. This perspective contains two things. First, it means seeing the general in the particular, meaning, what patterns can we see by looking at individual people or events? Second, it means seeing the strange in familiar. This second part is when you approach the everyday world as though you were seeing it for the first time, which isn’t easy but is necessary for keeping an open mind when you’re looking for patterns of behavior across society. Sometimes these patterns are so imbedded in what we assume that we fail to see them.
There are Key Concepts in the Study of Society
These concepts include social location, marginalization, and power and inequality.
“Social location” is a way to define yourself by race, social class, gender, sexual orientation, and religion. Looking at this is important because all of a person’s choices and what we learn or are taught is influenced by social location. This contributes to marginalization.
If a group is “marginalized,” it means that it occupies a position outside the centers of power. Marginalized groups are often racial, ethnic, or religious minorities. They tend to have a better understanding of how social power works because they see how it directly affects them all the time. In the United States, the African American community has been, and many argue still is, marginalized.
There are many different kinds of “power and inequality.” There are the obvious ones like economic power or political power, but that’s not all there is to it. There are also social and cultural powers. Sociology helps us to see, understand, and sometimes even fix these inequalities.
Sociology studies our own society, so we should use it to make our society the best it can be. It takes into account everything we do, whether big or small. It is an important factor in helping make our society a better place for everyone.
