What Is Sociology? - Paper

What Is Sociology? - Paper

What is Sociology?
Humans have evolved over time both physically and mentally and have developed habits of interactions with each other. In the words of Hess Markson and Stein, “People have always lived in groups or collectivities bound to each other by shared feelings and responsibilities” (pg 4, Sociology, Hess, Markson, Stein; 1996) Have you ever tried to explain your own interactions? Have you ever wondered why people fight? Do you ever think about how people can tell or believe something about a person just by their appearance? All of these questions can be answered by sociology. Sociology can help explain human interaction as well as the impact our society has on us and our impact on society.
What is Sociology?
Sociology is the scientific study of society and human behavior. It can show us how we are affected by the structure and culture of society and how we can change it (Truchil, 2010). Sociology analyzes many aspects of life such a politics, religion, race, class/ economic status, gender, ethnicity, culture and norms or roles and it enables us to understand how society works as a whole and how society affects us as a whole. How can sociological knowledge and skills help us to do this you may ask? C. Wright Mills wrote that "neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both." (The Sociological Imagination,1959) What Mills is trying to say is that you cannot understand how a person acts or how society impacts that person without understanding both society and the individual. For example Mills stresses that what goes on in the larger society shapes the probability of your own life.
Once you understand each of these you can associate them with each other and come up with hypothesis and theories that can be tested and potentially explain social phenomena. Where did sociology come from? Ideas about society originated from ancient civilizations that questioned the way in which they lived and...

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