Sociology

Sociology is the systematic study of society, social relationships, institutions, and patterns of collective human behavior.

Social structure: Recurring patterns of relationships and institutions that organize social life. It describes the patterned arrangements sociology seeks to explain.
Survey research: A method that gathers standardized responses from a selected sample of people. Surveys measure attitudes and experiences across populations.
Auguste Comte: A French thinker who coined the term sociology and advocated a scientific study of society. His program gave the emerging discipline its name and positivist ambition.
Social anthropology: The study of social life, relationships, and institutions across human communities. It shares sociology's questions while often emphasizing ethnographic comparison.
Structural functionalism: A sociological perspective that explains social institutions through their contributions to social order. It treats society as an interdependent system whose parts sustain patterns of order.
Social interaction: The reciprocal actions through which people communicate and respond to one another. Everyday interaction is a basic setting where social rules take shape.
Ethnography: A research approach based on sustained observation and participation in a social setting. It reveals how social order is made in everyday life.
Émile Durkheim: A French sociologist who established influential methods for studying social facts and solidarity. His work helped define sociology as a distinct academic discipline.
Political science: The study of political systems, institutions, power, and collective decision-making. Its study of power overlaps with sociology's analysis of institutions and groups.
Conflict theory: A perspective that explains social life through competition over power and scarce resources. It foregrounds inequality and struggles that functional accounts can understate.

Linked from 42 pages