The word sociology is translated as "science about society". It is considered to be that this term appeared in 1832 at the suggestion of the French philosopher August Comte.
Instruction
1. The sociology is a science about society and its systems, the social relations, social groups and communities, regularities of development and functioning of society. The sociology studies internal mechanisms of social structures, the relations between society and the personality, mass behavior of people and its regularity, etc. Unlike other exercises about society, sociology the abstraction is alien, she obtains data from the real world, and for their interpretation uses the scientific analysis that provides reliability of knowledge.
2. As the science sociology was created in the 19th century though interest in objects of its study existed at thinkers and researchers for a long time. Any uniform theory in sociology is absent, in its framework there is a set of paradigms and approaches.
3. The sociology has the structure which includes theoretical, empirical and applied sociology. Theoretical it is focused on scientific and objective studying society for obtaining theoretical knowledge which is used for interpretation of behavior of people subsequently and also the social phenomena. The empirical sociology has descriptive character. It studies public opinion and moods of social groups, collective/mass consciousness and behavior. The applied sociology is the closest to practice, she gains knowledge for the solution of practical, vital public tasks.
4. It is accepted to allocate three levels in structure of such science. Top - the level of all-sociological theories and knowledge. At the average level also special sociological theories unite branch (economic sociology, sociology of policy, the right, culture) (for example, families, persons, youth). The lower level means carrying out concrete social researches.
5. Also, depending on at what level the society is studied, allocate macro - and microsociology. The first studies processes within society in general and big social systems (institutes, social groups and communities), and the second - small social systems and interactions in them, social networks, the relations between certain people.
6. For sociology as sciences the principle of historicity - accounting of features of the temporary period and a context to which the studied event belongs has an important role. Availability of such information allows to understand better prerequisites of any given social problems (significant for existence of society) and ways of their decision.
7. In the modern world the sociology is widely put into practice in such areas as education, public policy, researches of public opinion, the demographic analysis, studying human resources, mass communications, immigration, questions of the gender relations, studying quality of life of people, studying the organizations, etc.