1.Introduction:
Every person can not survive without others because by nature, we human beings are social beings. In specific, we live in human groups and organizations. There are so many different social groups to which we belong. We are members of friendship or family and the members affect us to a certain degree. There are so many dimensions of social reality, there are so many different institutions.
Sociology is a discipline which studies society as well as social institutions and human groups in these institutions. There are so many different subareas in sociology. The word sociology comes from Latin.
There are two major dimensions:
a.Macrosociology:It is a discipline which studies large scale organizations or social institutions. In macrosociology there are five major institutions: politics, religion, economics, education and family.
In contemporary societies there are also military which affects our life, science, health and media. Therefore, all these institutions are topics of investigation: what is culture, what does group mean.....
b.Microsociology: It studies small groups and individual behaviors.
Sociology is a social science in scientific world. There are three scientific categories:
All these disciplines investigate the world, they all want to explain something and make generalization. There are different source of scientific methods. After generalizations, we make predictions. We have to have sufficient informations. If we have enough information about the world, we can control our surround, for doing that, we have to have enough data. Sciences helps us to investigate the world. This may be social or natural world. All scientists try to explain the world. The knowledge gives us power, power to control our environment so sciences try to explain things. Sociology, as a social science, studies human groups living in institutions. We use a kind of social perspective to explain things in sociology. It gives us an opportunity to look at the social life from a different point of view, it helps us to understand individual behavior that social, psychological questions in certain context.
Sociological perspective is a critical perspective
because sociologists ask critical questions
about people. This critical perspective helps us to investigate the
social reality that we come across every day.
When we look at something in the social world, at the first instance we see the manifest reality only but by the time we make using science, we can find out what is really going on about this social reality and if we can do that, we can find out real reason which affect this social reality. If we use science and scientific data , we can understand the reality much more better. Science gives us something different than our beliefs and opinions.
When we talk about commonsense knowledge, we talk about beliefs, opinions that we gather by making simple observations. If we rely on commonsense knowledge, we can only explain the manifest reality but if we use scientific methods, we can understand what is really going on. In order for us to go beyond our commonsense knowledge, we have to use scientific evidence and scientific methods.
The Development of Sociology:
The development of sociology has a very long history. Sociology developed in the middle of the 19th century,. Before the 19th century, especially in the 16th century, there were so many important changes in Europe. After 16th century, the feudalism started to transform into capitalism. In 16th century, there were many important turning points such as new discoveries, new inventions, the rise of big cities as commercial centers and the rise of new classes (workers and bourgeoisie). In 16 th century, the new discoveries are being done. These discoverers brought capital and new resources into Europe. Along with these developments, imperialism and European people as well as social upheavals in Europe. The success of natural sciences led to the development of sociologs specifically. All these things led to the necessity to understand the society. This job of explaining the transformations in Europe was belonging to sociology and sociologists.
The fathers of Sociology:
Assumptions of Sociological Perspective:
1) Humans are natural social beings.
2) Individuals are socially determined (social determinism)
3) Individuals create, sustain or change the social forms within which they live.
Sociological perspective based on basic assumptions. We have to live together so by nature we are social beings. We are survive within human groups. We have some curtain needs. So we survive in human groups, they have to cooperate with one another. It emphasizes that humans are not like robots, they are active creatures. They both shape the world itself, on the other hand, they are being affected by the society in which they live. These assumptions tell us that all groups are human made. Social organizations are imperfect because we always imagine organizations as though they are operating perfectly but they are human made. This perspective shows that individuals are capable of changing the society.
Sociology looks at basic problems which emerge at:
Sociological assumption tells that things are not as they seem to be. Science tries to explain things, what is going to happen and make generalization. Since sociological perspective is critical, it may discomfort and irritate people, some people may not like it. The more we come across the reality, the more we become irritated. If we are defining ourselves as modern people, being modern requires being curious about the world. Modern persons are the ones who want to add new information every day to their lives.
Methodology and Scientific methods:
Methodology is a systematic by which we collect data, methods are specific theories.
Sociological research is not neutral, most of the time it is political. We cannot say that science is objective all the time. When social scientist start doing their investigations, they first select a topic, they want to explain the reality. Scientists are not always free enough to conduct scientific research. After choosing a topic, we have to specify exactly what we want to learn more about this topic. After we specify that what we going to do, we look at the studies, articles, books were written about the research which are important in our topic. After looking articles, we formulate a hypothesis. Hypothesis is a sentence which causal statement. In every hypothesis, there are two variables: dependent and independent. After formulating a hypothesis, we choose a research method. We have to decide what kind of tools we will be using. Experiments are especially used in natural sciences. After choosing a research method, we collect data from different ways. In survey, we collect data by asking questions to people. By doing that, we can investigates their beliefs, opinions, ideas, attitudes..... In survey technic, we do not ask questions to our target group, we select a sample of people within the population. In observation, we participate into a natural setting (environment). we hide or express our identity.( participant: hide the identity) In fieldwork, what you do is to observe people while we are living there. In documents (existing resources), what researcher is do to use secondary data. They especially look at governmental private data , newspapers, articles and books. They also go to the research institutions and look at archives. After collecting data, we analyze the result. We may use statistical technics or we may write them down. After finishing research, we share the results with other people, this motivates new ideas.