Sociology

statue in Tunis, Tunisia (1332–1406) Sociological reasoning predates the foundation of the discipline itself. Social analysis has origins in the common stock of universal, global knowledge and philosophy, having been carried out as far back as the time of old comic poetry which features social and political criticism, and ancient Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. For instance, the origin of the survey can be traced back to at least the Domesday Book in 1086, while ancient philosophers such as Confucius wrote about the importance of social roles. Medieval Arabic writings encompass a rich tradition that offers early insights into sociology. Some sources consider Ibn Khaldun, a 14th-century Muslim scholar from Tunisia, to have been the father of sociology, although there is no reference to his work in the writings of European contributors to modern sociology. Khaldun's Muqaddimah was considered to be amongst the first works to advance social-scientific reasoning on social cohesion and social conflict.). The suffix -logy ('the study of') comes from that of the Greek -λογία, derived from λόγος (, 'word' or 'knowledge'). The term sociology was first coined in 1780 by the French essayist Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès in an unpublished manuscript. Sociology was later defined independently by French philosopher of science Auguste Comte (1798–1857) in 1838 as a new way of looking at society. Comte endeavored to unify history, psychology, and economics through the scientific understanding of social life. Writing shortly after the malaise of the French Revolution, he proposed that social ills could be remedied through sociological positivism, an epistemological approach outlined in the Course in Positive Philosophy (1830–1842), later included in A General View of Positivism (1848). Comte believed a positivist stage would mark the final era in the progression of human understanding, after conjectural theological and metaphysical phases. (1798–1857) (1818–1883) Marx Both Comte and Karl Marx set out to develop scientifically justified systems in the wake of European industrialization and secularization, informed by key movements in the philosophies of history and science. Marx rejected Comtean positivism but in attempting to develop a "science of society" nevertheless came to be recognized as a founder of sociology as the word gained wider meaning. For Isaiah Berlin, even though Marx did not consider himself to be a sociologist, he may be regarded as the "true father" of modern sociology, "in so far as anyone can claim the title."To have given clear and unified answers in familiar empirical terms to those theoretical questions which most occupied men's minds at the time, and to have deduced from them clear practical directives without creating obviously artificial links between the two, was the principal achievement of Marx's theory. The sociological treatment of historical and moral problems, which Comte and after him, Spencer and Taine, had discussed and mapped, became a precise and concrete study only when the attack of militant Marxism made its conclusions a burning issue, and so made the search for evidence more zealous and the attention to method more intense. So strong was his influence that many other 19th-century thinkers, including Émile Durkheim, defined their ideas in relation to his. Durkheim's Division of Labour in Society is to a large extent an extended debate with Spencer, from whose sociology Durkheim borrowed extensively. While Marxian ideas defined one strand of sociology, Spencer was a critic of socialism, as well as a strong advocate for a laissez-faire style of government. His ideas were closely observed by conservative political circles, especially in the United States and England. The institutionalization of sociology as an academic discipline, however, was chiefly led by Émile Durkheim, who developed positivism as a foundation for practical social research. While Durkheim rejected much of the detail of Comte's philosophy, he retained and refined its method, maintaining that the social sciences are a logical continuation of the natural ones into the realm of human activity, and insisting that they may retain the same objectivity, rationalism, and approach to causality. Durkheim's monograph Suicide (1897) is considered a seminal work in statistical analysis by contemporary sociologists. Suicide is a case study of variations in suicide rates among Catholic and Protestant populations, and served to distinguish sociological analysis from psychology or philosophy. It also marked a major contribution to the theoretical concept of structural functionalism. By carefully examining suicide statistics in different police districts, he attempted to demonstrate that Catholic communities have a lower suicide rate than that of Protestants, something he attributed to social (as opposed to individual or psychological) causes. He developed the notion of objective social facts to delineate a distinct empirical object for sociology to study. The field predominated in continental Europe, with British anthropology and statistics generally following on a separate trajectory. By the turn of the 20th century, however, many theorists were active in the English-speaking world. Few early sociologists were confined strictly to the subject, interacting also with economics, jurisprudence, psychology, and philosophy, with theories being appropriated in a variety of different fields. Since its inception, sociological epistemology, methods, and frames of inquiry have significantly expanded and diverged. In 1883, Lester F. Ward, who later became the first president of the American Sociological Association (ASA), published Dynamic Sociology—Or Applied social science as based upon statical sociology and the less complex sciences, attacking the laissez-faire sociology of Herbert Spencer and Sumner. Their influence gave rise to social psychology and the symbolic interactionism of the modern Chicago School. The American Journal of Sociology was founded in 1895, followed by the ASA in 1905. The first sociology department established in the United Kingdom was at the London School of Economics and Political Science (home of the British Journal of Sociology) in 1904. Harriet Martineau, an English translator of Comte, has been cited as the first female sociologist. In 1909, the German Sociological Association was founded by Ferdinand Tönnies, Max Weber, and Georg Simmel, among others. Weber established the first department in Germany at LMU Munich in 1919, having presented an influential new antipositivist sociology. ==Theoretical traditions==

Positivism and anti-positivism Positivism The overarching methodological principle of positivism is to conduct sociology in broadly the same manner as natural science. An emphasis on empiricism and the scientific method is sought to provide a tested foundation for sociological research, based on the assumption that the only authentic knowledge is scientific, and that such knowledge can only be obtained through positive affirmation via scientific methodology. The term has long since ceased to carry this meaning; there are no fewer than twelve distinct epistemologies that are referred to as positivism. In the Italian context of the development of the social sciences and of sociology in particular, there are oppositions to the first foundation of the discipline, sustained by speculative philosophies and by the anti-scientific tendencies that had matured through the critique of positivism and evolutionism, and a progressive tradition struggles to establish itself. At the turn of the 20th century, the first generation of German sociologists formally introduced methodological anti-positivism, proposing that research should concentrate on human cultural norms, values, symbols, and social processes viewed from a resolutely subjective perspective. Max Weber argued that sociology may be loosely described as a science as it can identify causal relationships of human "social action"—especially among "ideal types", or hypothetical simplifications of complex social phenomena. Both Weber and Georg Simmel pioneered the "Verstehen" (or 'interpretative') method in social science; a systematic process by which an outside observer attempts to relate to a particular cultural group, or indigenous people, on their own terms and from their own point of view. Through the work of Simmel, in particular, sociology acquired a possible character beyond positivist data-collection or grand, deterministic systems of structural law. Relatively isolated from the sociological academy throughout his lifetime, Simmel presented idiosyncratic analyses of modernity more reminiscent of the phenomenological and existential writers than of Comte or Durkheim, paying particular concern to the forms of, and possibilities for, social individuality. Classical theory The contemporary discipline of sociology is theoretically multi-paradigmatic in line with the contentions of classical social theory. Randall Collins' well-cited survey of sociological theory retroactively labels various theorists as belonging to four theoretical traditions: Functionalism, Conflict, Symbolic Interactionism, and Utilitarianism. Accordingly, modern sociological theory predominantly descends from functionalist (Durkheim) and conflict (Marx and Weber) approaches to social structure, as well as from symbolic-interactionist approaches to social interaction, such as micro-level structural (Simmel) and pragmatist (Mead, Cooley) perspectives. Utilitarianism (also known as rational choice or social exchange), although often associated with economics, is an established tradition within sociological theory. Lastly, as argued by Raewyn Connell, a tradition that is often forgotten is that of Social Darwinism, which applies the logic of Darwinian biological evolution to people and societies. This tradition often aligns with classical functionalism, and was once the dominant theoretical stance in American sociology, from , associated with several founders of sociology, primarily Herbert Spencer, Lester F. Ward, and William Graham Sumner. Contemporary sociological theory retains traces of each of these traditions, and they are by no means mutually exclusive. Functionalism A broad historical paradigm in both sociology and anthropology, functionalism addresses the social structure—referred to as "social organization" by the classical theorists—with respect to the whole and the necessary functions of its constituent elements. A common analogy (popularized by Herbert Spencer) is to regard norms and institutions as 'organs' that work towards the proper functioning of the entire 'body' of society. Classical functionalist theory is generally united by its tendency towards biological analogy and notions of social evolutionism, in that the basic form of society would increase in complexity. Those forms of social organization that promoted solidarity would eventually overcome social disorganization. As Giddens states:Functionalist thought, from Comte onwards, has looked particularly towards biology as the science providing the closest and most compatible model for social science. Biology has been taken to provide a guide to conceptualizing the structure and the function of social systems and to analyzing processes of evolution via mechanisms of adaptation. Functionalism strongly emphasizes the pre-eminence of the social world over its individual parts (i.e. its constituent actors, human subjects). Conflict theory Functionalist theories emphasize "cohesive systems" and are often contrasted with "conflict theories", which critique the overarching socio-political system or emphasize the inequality between particular groups. The following quotes from Durkheim and Marx epitomize the political, as well as theoretical, disparities between functionalist and conflict thought, respectively: Symbolic interactionism Symbolic interaction—often associated with interactionism, phenomenology, dramaturgy, interpretivism—is a sociological approach that places emphasis on subjective meanings and the empirical unfolding of social processes, generally accessed through micro-analysis. This tradition emerged in the Chicago School of the 1920s and 1930s, which, before World War II, "had been the center of sociological research and graduate study." The approach focuses on creating a framework for building a theory that sees society as the product of the everyday interactions of individuals. Society is nothing more than the shared reality that people construct as they interact with one another. This approach views people interacting in countless settings, using symbolic communication to accomplish the tasks at hand. Therefore, society is a complex, ever-changing mosaic of subjective meanings. Some critics of this approach argue that it only looks at what is happening in a particular social situation, and disregards the effects that culture, race or gender (i.e. social-historical structures) may have in that situation. • "a knowledge of alternatives;" • "a knowledge of, or beliefs about the consequences of the various alternatives;" • "an ordering of preferences over outcomes;" and • "a decision rule, to select among the possible alternatives" Exchange theory is specifically attributed to the work of George C. Homans, Peter Blau and Richard Emerson. Organizational sociologists James G. March and Herbert A. Simon noted that an individual's rationality is bounded by the context or organizational setting. The utilitarian perspective in sociology was, most notably, revitalized in the late 20th century by the work of former ASA president James Coleman. 20th-century social theory Following the decline of sociocultural evolution theories in the United States, interactionist thought from the Chicago School came to dominate American sociology. As Anselm Strauss describes, "we didn't think symbolic interaction was a perspective in sociology; we thought it was sociology." After World War II, mainstream sociology shifted to the survey-research of Paul Lazarsfeld at Columbia University and the general theorizing of Pitirim Sorokin, followed by Talcott Parsons at Harvard University. Ultimately, "the failure of the Chicago, Columbia, and Wisconsin [sociology] departments to produce a significant number of graduate students interested in and committed to general theory in the years 1936–45 was to the advantage of the Harvard department." As Parsons began to dominate general theory, his work primarily referenced European sociology—almost entirely omitting citations of both the American tradition of sociocultural-evolution as well as pragmatism. In addition to Parsons' revision of the sociological canon (which included Marshall, Pareto, Web, er and Durkheim), the lack of theoretical challenges from other departments nurtured the rise of the Parsonian structural-functionalist movement, which reached its crescendo in the 1950s, but by the 1960s was in rapid decline.The orthodox consensus terminated in the late 1960s and 1970s as the middle ground shared by otherwise competing perspectives gave way. A baffling variety of competing perspectives replaced them. This third 'generation' of social theory includes phenomenologically inspired approaches, critical theory, ethnomethodology, symbolic interactionism, structuralism, post-structuralism, and theories written in the tradition of hermeneutics and ordinary language philosophy. Pax Wisconsana While some conflict approaches also gained popularity in the United States, the mainstream of the discipline instead shifted to a variety of empirically oriented middle-range theories with no single overarching, or "grand", theoretical orientation. John Levi Martin refers to this "golden age of methodological unity and theoretical calm" as the Pax Wisconsana, as it reflected the composition of the sociology department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison: numerous scholars working on separate projects with little contention. Omar Lizardo describes the pax wisconsana as "a Midwestern flavored, Mertonian resolution of the theory/method wars in which [sociologists] all agreed on at least two working hypotheses: (1) grand theory is a waste of time; [and] (2) good theory has to be good to think with or goes in the trash bin." Despite the aversion to grand theory in the latter half of the 20th century, several new traditions have emerged that propose various syntheses: structuralism, post-structuralism, cultural sociology, and systems theory. Some sociologists have called for a return to 'grand theory' to combat the rise of scientific and pragmatist influences within the tradition of sociological thought (see Duane Rousselle). |alt= Structuralism The structuralist movement originated primarily from the work of Durkheim as interpreted by two European scholars: Anthony Giddens, a sociologist, whose theory of structuration draws on the linguistic theory of Ferdinand de Saussure; and Claude Lévi-Strauss, an anthropologist. In this context, 'structure' does not refer to 'social structure', but to the semiotic understanding of human culture as a system of signs. One may delineate four central tenets of structuralism: • Structure is what determines the structure of a whole. • Structuralists believe that every system has a structure. • Structuralists are interested in 'structural' laws that deal with coexistence rather than changes. • Structures are the 'real things' beneath the surface or the appearance of meaning. The second tradition of structuralist thought, contemporaneous with Giddens, emerges from the American School of social network analysis in the 1970s and 1980s, spearheaded by the Harvard Department of Social Relations led by Harrison White and his students. This tradition of structuralist thought argues that, rather than semiotics, social structure is a network of patterned social relations. And, rather than Levi-Strauss, this school of thought draws on the notions of structure as theorized by Levi-Strauss' contemporary anthropologist, Radcliffe-Brown. Some refer to this as "network structuralism", and equate it to "British structuralism" as opposed to the "French structuralism" of Levi-Strauss. Post-structuralism Post-structuralist thought has tended to reject 'humanist' assumptions in the construction of social theory. Michel Foucault provides an important critique in his Archaeology of the Human Sciences, though Habermas (1986) and Rorty (1986) have both argued that Foucault merely replaces one such system of thought with another. The dialogue between these intellectuals highlights a trend in recent years for certain schools of sociology and philosophy to intersect. The anti-humanist position has been associated with "postmodernism", a term used in specific contexts to describe an era or phenomena, but occasionally construed as a method. ==Central theoretical problems==

Overall, there is a strong consensus regarding the central problems of sociological theory, which are largely inherited from the classical theoretical traditions. This consensus is: how to link, transcend, or cope with the following "big three" dichotomies: • subjectivity and objectivity, which deal with knowledge; • structure and agency, which deal with action; • and synchrony and diachrony, which deal with time. Lastly, sociological theory often grapples with integrating or transcending the divide among micro-, meso-, and macro-scale social phenomena, which is a subset of the three central problems. Subjectivity and objectivity The problem of subjectivity and objectivity can be divided into two parts: a concern over the general possibilities of social actions, and the specific problem of social scientific knowledge. In the former, the subjective is often equated (though not necessarily) with the individual, and the individual's intentions and interpretations of the objective. The objective is often considered to be any public or external action or outcome, up to and including society writ large. A primary question for social theorists, then, is how knowledge reproduces along the chain of subjective-objective-subjective, that is to say: how is intersubjectivity achieved? While qualitative methods have historically sought to tease out subjective interpretations, quantitative survey methods also seek to capture individual subjectivities. Qualitative methods take an approach to objective description known as in situ, meaning that descriptions must include appropriate contextual information to be understood. The latter concern with scientific knowledge results from the fact that a sociologist is part of the very object they seek to explain, as Bourdieu explains: Structure and agency Structure and agency, sometimes referred to as determinism versus voluntarism, form an enduring ontological debate in social theory: "Do social structures determine an individual's behaviour or does human agency?" In this context, agency refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and make free choices, whereas structure relates to factors that limit or affect the choices and actions of individuals (e.g., social class, religion, gender, ethnicity, etc.). Discussions over the primacy of either structure or agency relate to the core of sociological epistemology (i.e. "what is the social world made of?", "what is a cause in the social world, and what is an effect?"). A perennial question within this debate is that of "social reproduction": how are structures (specifically, structures producing inequality) reproduced through the choices of individuals? Synchrony and diachrony Synchrony and diachrony (or statics and dynamics) within social theory are terms that refer to a distinction that emerged through the work of Levi-Strauss who inherited it from the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure. Synchrony slices moments for analysis, thus it is an analysis of static social reality. Diachrony, on the other hand, attempts to analyse dynamic sequences. Following Saussure, synchrony would refer to social phenomena as a static concept like a language, while diachrony would refer to unfolding processes like actual speech. In Anthony Giddens' introduction to Central Problems in Social Theory, he states that, "to show the interdependence of action and structure…we must grasp the time space relations inherent in the constitution of all social interaction." And like structure and agency, time is integral to the discussion of social reproduction. In sociology, historical sociology is often better positioned to analyse social life diachronically, while survey research takes a snapshot of social life and is thus better equipped to understand it synchronically. Some argue that the synchrony of social structure is a methodological perspective rather than an ontological claim. Nonetheless, the problem for theory is how to integrate the two manners of recording and thinking about social data. ==Research methodology==

Sociological research methods may be divided into two broad, though often supplementary, categories: • Qualitative designs emphasize understanding of social phenomena through direct observation, communication with participants, or analysis of texts, and may stress contextual and subjective accuracy over generality. • Quantitative designs approach social phenomena through quantifiable evidence, and often rely on statistical analysis of many cases (or across intentionally designed treatments in an experiment) to establish valid and reliable general claims. Sociologists are often divided into camps of support for particular research techniques. These disputes relate to the epistemological debates at the historical core of social theory. While very different in many aspects, both qualitative and quantitative approaches involve a systematic interaction between theory and data. or QDA Miner. • Experimental research: The researcher isolates a single social process and reproduces it in a laboratory (for example, by creating a situation where unconscious sexist judgements are possible), seeking to determine whether or not certain social variables can cause, or depend upon, other variables (for instance, seeing if people's feelings about traditional gender roles can be manipulated by the activation of contrasting gender stereotypes). particularly about their effectiveness and efficiency. In both the public and private sectors, stakeholders often want to know whether the programs they fund, implement, vote for, or object to are producing the intended effect. While program evaluation first focuses on this definition, important considerations often include the program's cost per participant, how it could be improved, whether it is worthwhile, whether there are better alternatives, whether there are unintended outcomes, and whether the program's goals are appropriate and useful. • Survey research: The researcher gathers data using interviews, questionnaires, or similar feedback from a set of people sampled from a particular population of interest. Survey items from an interview or questionnaire may be open-ended or closed-ended. Using computer simulations, artificial intelligence, text mining, complex statistical methods, and new analytic approaches like social network analysis and social sequence analysis, computational sociology develops and tests theories of complex social processes through bottom-up modelling of social interactions. Although the subject matter and methodologies in social science differ from those in natural science or computer science, several of the approaches used in contemporary social simulation originated from fields such as physics and artificial intelligence. By the same token, some of the approaches that originated in computational sociology have been imported into the natural sciences, such as measures of network centrality from the fields of social network analysis and network science. In relevant literature, computational sociology is often related to the study of social complexity. Social complexity concepts such as complex systems, non-linear interconnection among macro and micro process, and emergence, have entered the vocabulary of computational sociology. A practical and well-known example is the construction of a computational model in the form of an "artificial society", by which researchers can analyse the structure of a social system. ==Subfields==

Culture (left, front), Theodor Adorno (right, front), and Jürgen Habermas (right, back), 1965 Sociologists' approach to culture can be divided into "sociology of culture" and "cultural sociology"—terms that are similar, though not entirely interchangeable. Sociology of culture is an older term, and it considers some topics and objects as more or less "cultural" than others. Conversely, cultural sociology sees all social phenomena as inherently cultural. Sociology of culture often attempts to explain certain cultural phenomena as a product of social processes, while cultural sociology sees culture as a potential explanation of social phenomena. For Simmel, culture referred to "the cultivation of individuals through the agency of external forms which have been objectified in the course of history." None of the founding fathers of sociology produced a detailed study of art, but they did develop ideas that were subsequently applied to literature by others. Marx's theory of ideology was directed at literature by Pierre Macherey, Terry Eagleton, and Fredric Jameson. Weber's theory of modernity as cultural rationalization, which he applied to music, was later extended by Frankfurt School writers such as Theodor Adorno and Jürgen Habermas to all the arts, including literature. Durkheim's view of sociology as the study of externally defined social facts was redirected towards literature by Robert Escarpit. Bourdieu's own work is clearly indebted to Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. Criminality, deviance, law and punishment Criminologists analyse the nature, causes, and control of criminal activity, drawing upon methods from sociology, psychology, and the behavioural sciences. The sociology of deviance focuses on actions or behaviours that violate norms, including both infringements of formally enacted rules (e.g., crime) and informal violations of cultural norms. It is the remit of sociologists to study why these norms exist, how they change over time, and how they are enforced. The concept of social disorganization refers to the idea that broader social systems lead to norm violations. For instance, Robert K. Merton produced a typology of deviance, which includes both individual and system-level causal explanations of deviance. The sociology of law refers to both a sub-discipline of sociology and an approach within the field of legal studies. Sociology of law is a diverse field of study that examines the interaction between law and other aspects of society, including the development of legal institutions and the effects of laws on social change, and vice versa. For example, an influential recent work in the field relies on statistical analyses to argue that the increase in incarceration in the US over the last 30 years is due to changes in law and policing and not to an increase in crime; and that this increase has significantly contributed to the persistence of racial stratification. Internet and digital media The Internet is of interest to sociologists in various ways, most practically as a tool for research and as a discussion platform. The sociology of the Internet in the broad sense concerns the analysis of online communities (e.g. newsgroups, social networking sites) and virtual worlds, meaning that there is often overlap with community sociology. Online communities may be studied statistically through network analysis or interpreted qualitatively through virtual ethnography. Moreover, organizational change is catalysed by new media, thereby influencing social change at large, perhaps forming the framework for a transformation from an industrial to an informational society. One notable text is Manuel Castells' The Internet Galaxy—the title of which forms an inter-textual reference to Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy. Closely related to the sociology of the Internet is digital sociology, which expands the scope of study to address not only the Internet but also the impact of other digital media and devices that have emerged since the first decade of the twenty-first century. Media As with cultural studies, media studies is a distinct discipline that owes its development to the convergence of sociology and other social sciences and the humanities, in particular literary criticism and critical theory. Though neither the production process nor the critique of aesthetic forms is in the remit of sociologists, analyses of socializing factors, such as ideological effects and audience reception, stem from sociological theory and method. Thus, the 'sociology of the media' is not a subdiscipline per se, but the media is a common and often indispensable topic. Economic sociology The term "economic sociology" was first used by William Stanley Jevons in 1879 and was later coined in the works of Durkheim, Weber, and Simmel between 1890 and 1920. Education The sociology of education is the study of how educational institutions determine social structures, experiences, and other outcomes. It is particularly concerned with the schooling systems of modern industrial societies. Circumstantial evidence supporting the social pre-wiring hypothesis can be revealed when examining newborns' behavior. Newborns, not even hours after birth, have been found to display a preparedness for social interaction. This preparedness is expressed in ways such as their imitation of facial gestures. This observed behavior cannot be attributed to any current form of socialization or social construction. Rather, newborns most likely inherit to some extent social behavior and identity through genetics. "How to account for the differences in definitions of femininity and masculinity and in sex role across different societies and historical periods" is also a concern. Health, illness, and the body The sociology of health and illness focuses on the social effects of, and public attitudes toward, illnesses, diseases, mental health, and disabilities. This sub-field also overlaps with gerontology and the study of the ageing process. Medical sociology, by contrast, focuses on the inner workings of the medical profession, its organizations and institutions, and how these can shape knowledge and interactions. In Britain, sociology was introduced into the medical curriculum following the Goodenough Report (1944). The sociology of the body and embodiment takes a broad perspective on the idea of "the body". It includes "a wide range of embodied dynamics including human and non-human bodies, morphology, human reproduction, anatomy, body fluids, biotechnology, genetics". This often intersects with health and illness, as well as theories of bodies as political, social, cultural, economic and ideological productions. The ISA maintains a Research Committee devoted to "the Body in the Social Sciences". Death, dying, bereavement A subfield of the sociology of health and illness that overlaps with cultural sociology is the study of death, dying and bereavement, sometimes referred to broadly as the sociology of death. This topic is exemplified by the work of Douglas Davies and Michael C. Kearl. Knowledge and science The sociology of knowledge is the study of the relationship between human thought and the social context within which it arises, and of the effects prevailing ideas have on societies. The term first came into widespread use in the 1920s, when several German-speaking theorists, most notably Max Scheler and Karl Mannheim, wrote extensively on it. With the dominance of functionalism through the middle years of the 20th century, the sociology of knowledge tended to remain on the periphery of mainstream sociological thought. It was largely reinvented and applied much more closely to everyday life in the 1960s, particularly by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann in The Social Construction of Reality (1966) and is still central for methods dealing with qualitative understanding of human society (compare socially constructed reality). The "archaeological" and "genealogical" studies of Michel Foucault are of considerable contemporary influence. The sociology of science involves the study of science as a social activity, especially the study of "with the social conditions and effects of science, and with the social structures and processes of scientific activity." The ISA maintains a Research Committee on Science and Technology. Leisure Sociology of leisure is the study of how humans organize their free time. Leisure includes a broad array of activities, such as sport, tourism, and the playing of games. The sociology of leisure is closely tied to the sociology of work, as each explores a different side of the work–leisure relationship. More recent studies in the field move away from the work–leisure relationship and focus on the relation between leisure and culture. This area of sociology began with Thorstein Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class. Peace, war, and conflict This subfield of sociology broadly studies the dynamics of war, conflict resolution, peace movements, war refugees, and military institutions. As a subset of this subfield, military sociology aims towards the systematic study of the military as a social group rather than as an organization. It is a highly specialized sub-field which examines issues related to service personnel as a distinct group with coerced collective action based on shared interests linked to survival in vocation and combat, with purposes and values that are more defined and narrower than within civil society. Military sociology also concerns civilian-military relations and interactions between other groups or governmental agencies. Topics include the dominant assumptions held by those in the military, changes in military members' willingness to fight, military unionization, military professionalism, the increased use of women, the military-industrial-academic complex, the military's dependence on research, and the military's institutional and organizational structure. In this respect, questions of political opinion formation brought about some of the pioneering uses of statistical survey research by Paul Lazarsfeld. A major subfield of political sociology developed in relation to such questions and draws on comparative history to analyse socio-political trends. The field developed from the work of Max Weber and Moisey Ostrogorsky. Contemporary political sociology includes these areas of research, but it has also been opened to broader questions of power and politics. Today, political sociologists are as likely to be concerned with how identities are formed that contribute to structural domination by one group over another; the politics of who knows how and with what authority; and questions of how power is contested in social interactions in such a way as to bring about widespread cultural and social change. Such questions are more likely to be studied qualitatively. The study of social movements and their effects has been especially important in relation to these wider definitions of politics and power. Political sociology has also moved beyond methodological nationalism and analysed the role of non-governmental organizations, the diffusion of the nation-state throughout the Earth as a social construct, and the role of stateless entities in the modern world society. Contemporary political sociologists also study interstate interactions and human rights. Population and demography Demographers or sociologists of population study the size, composition, and change over time of a given population. Demographers study how these characteristics impact, or are impacted by, various social, economic, or political systems. The study of population is also closely related to human ecology and environmental sociology, which studies a population's relationship with the surrounding environment and often overlaps with urban or rural sociology. Researchers in this field may study the movement of populations: transportation, migrations, diaspora, etc., which falls into the subfield known as mobilities studies and is closely related to human geography. Demographers may also study the spread of disease within a given population, a field known as epidemiology. Public sociology Public sociology refers to an approach to the discipline that seeks to transcend the academy to engage with wider audiences. It is perhaps best understood as a style of sociology rather than a particular method, theory, or set of political values. This approach is primarily associated with Michael Burawoy, who contrasted it with professional sociology, a form of academic sociology that is concerned primarily with addressing other professional sociologists. Public sociology is also part of the broader field of science communication or science journalism. Race and ethnic relations The sociology of race and of ethnic relations is the area of the discipline that studies the social, political, and economic relations between races and ethnicities at all levels of society. This area encompasses the study of racism, residential segregation, and other complex social processes between different racial and ethnic groups. This research frequently interacts with other areas of sociology, such as stratification and social psychology, as well as with postcolonial theory. At the level of political policy, ethnic relations are discussed in terms of either assimilationism or multiculturalism. Anti-racism is another policy approach, particularly popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Religion The sociology of religion concerns the practices, historical backgrounds, developments, universal themes, and roles of religion in society. There is particular emphasis on the recurring role of religion in all societies and throughout recorded history. The sociology of religion is distinguished from the philosophy of religion in that sociologists do not set out to assess the validity of religious truth-claims, instead assuming what Peter L. Berger has described as a position of "methodological atheism". It may be said that the modern formal discipline of sociology began with the analysis of religion in Durkheim's 1897 study of suicide rates among Roman Catholic and Protestant populations. Max Weber published four major texts on religion in a context of economic sociology and social stratification: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905), The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism (1915), The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism (1915), and Ancient Judaism (1920). Contemporary debates often centre on topics such as secularization, civil religion, the intersection of religion and economics, and the role of religion in a context of globalization and multiculturalism. Social change and development The sociology of change and development attempts to understand how societies develop and how they can be changed. This includes studying many different aspects of society, for example demographic trends, political or technological trends, or changes in culture. Within this field, sociologists often use macrosociological methods or historical-comparative methods. In contemporary studies of social change, there are overlaps with international development or community development. However, most founders of sociology developed theories of social change based on their studies of history. For instance, Marx contended that the material circumstances of society ultimately caused the ideal or cultural aspects of society, while Weber argued that it was in fact the cultural mores of Protestantism that ushered in a transformation of material circumstances. In contrast to both, Durkheim argued that societies moved from simple to complex through a process of sociocultural evolution. Sociologists in this field also study processes of globalization and imperialism. Most notably, Immanuel Wallerstein extends Marx's theoretical framework to encompass long spans of time and the entire globe in what is known as world systems theory. Development sociology is also heavily influenced by post-colonialism. In recent years, Raewyn Connell issued a critique of the bias in sociological research towards countries in the Global North. She argues that this bias blinds sociologists to the lived experiences of the Global South, specifically, so-called "Northern Theory" lacks an adequate theory of imperialism and colonialism. Many organizations are studying social change, including the Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations, and the Global Social Change Research Project. Social networks A social network is a social structure composed of individuals (or organizations) called "nodes", which are tied (connected) by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, financial exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of beliefs, knowledge or prestige. Social networks operate on many levels, from families to nations, and play a critical role in determining how problems are solved, how organizations are run, and the extent to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals. An underlying theoretical assumption of social network analysis is that groups are not necessarily the building blocks of society: the approach is open to studying less-bounded social systems, from non-local communities to networks of exchange. Drawing theoretically on relational sociology, social network analysis avoids treating individuals (persons, organizations, states) as discrete units of analysis; it instead focuses on how the structure of ties affects and constitutes individuals and their relationships. In contrast to analyses that assume socialization into norms determines behaviour, network analysis examines the extent to which the structure and composition of ties affect norms. On the other hand, recent research by Omar Lizardo also demonstrates that preexisting cultural tastes shape network ties. Social network theory is usually defined in formal mathematics and may include integration of geographical data into sociomapping. Social psychology Sociological social psychology focuses on micro-scale social actions. This area may be described as adhering to "sociological miniaturism", examining whole societies by studying individual thoughts and emotions, as well as the behaviour of small groups. Pierre Bourdieu provides a modern example in the concepts of cultural and symbolic capital. Theorists such as Ralf Dahrendorf have noted the tendency towards an enlarged middle-class in modern Western societies, particularly in relation to the necessity of an educated workforce in technological or service-based economies. Perspectives concerning globalization, such as dependency theory, suggest this effect owes to the shift of workers to the developing countries. Urban and rural sociology Urban sociology involves the analysis of social life and human interaction in metropolitan areas. It is a discipline that seeks to provide advice on planning and policy-making. After the Industrial Revolution, works such as Georg Simmel's The Metropolis and Mental Life (1903) focused on urbanization and its effects on alienation and anonymity. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Chicago School produced a major body of theory on the nature of the city, important to both urban sociology and criminology, utilizing symbolic interactionism as a method of field research. Contemporary research is commonly placed in a context of globalization, for instance, in Saskia Sassen's study of the "global city". Rural sociology, by contrast, is the analysis of non-metropolitan areas. Because agriculture and wilderness are more prominent social facts in rural regions, rural sociologists often overlap with environmental sociologists. Community sociology Often grouped with urban and rural sociology is that of community sociology, or the sociology of community. Taking various communities—including online communities—as the unit of analysis, community sociologists study the origin and effects of different associations of people. For instance, German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies distinguished between two types of human association: gemeinschaft (usually translated as "community") and gesellschaft ("society" or "association"). In his 1887 work, Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, Tönnies argued that Gemeinschaft is perceived as a tighter, more cohesive social entity due to the presence of a "unity of will". The 'development' or 'health' of a community is also a central concern of community sociologists, who also engage in development sociology, exemplified by the literature surrounding the concept of social capital. == Other academic disciplines ==

Sociology overlaps with a variety of disciplines that study society, in particular social anthropology, political science, economics, social work, and social philosophy. Many comparatively new fields, such as communication studies, cultural studies, demography, and literary theory, draw upon methods that originated in sociology. The terms "social science" and "social research" have both gained a degree of autonomy since they originated in classical sociology. The distinct field of social anthropology or anthroposociology is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and Commonwealth and much of Europe (France in particular), where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In the United States, social anthropology is commonly subsumed within cultural anthropology (or under the relatively new designation of sociocultural anthropology). Sociology and applied sociology are connected to the professional and academic discipline of social work. In 2007, The Times Higher Education Guide published a list of 'The most cited authors of books in the Humanities' (including philosophy and psychology). Seven of the top ten are listed as sociologists: Michel Foucault (1), Pierre Bourdieu (2), Anthony Giddens (5), Erving Goffman (6), Jürgen Habermas (7), Max Weber (8), and Bruno Latour (10). == Journals ==

The most highly ranked general journals which publish original research in the field of sociology are the American Journal of Sociology and the American Sociological Review. Many other generalist and specialized journals exist. == See also ==