Sociology: Terminology, Theories & Theorists

The most commonly understood form of assimilation is that of cultural assimilation.

From The Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology
Treated generically, this term refers to behavior that is carried out by some sort of collective rather than by an individual.

From the Latin communitas, a unified body of individuals, the term ‘community’ is one of the most important words in the modern and contemporary political, philosophical and sociological lexicon. A community is any large or small group of people sharing a common history, language, set of values or goals (CULTURE).

In anthropology, the integrated system of socially acquired values, beliefs, and rules of conduct which delimit the range of accepted behaviors in any given society. Cultural differences distinguish societies from one another.

A historical means of social classification and differentiation that attempts to essentialize political and cultural differences by linking physical traits (i.e. skin, blood, genes) and social practices (i.e. religion, violence, passion) to innate, immutable characteristics (see essentialism).

From Reader's Guide to the Social Sciences
Social change is any alteration in the cultural, structural, population, or ecological characteristics of a social system such as a society.

Individuals united by a common purpose who act collectively to promote or resist political or social change.

Although human social behavior has been studied since antiquity, the modern social sciences as disciplines rooted in the scientific method date only from the 18th cent. Enlightenment.

From Reader's Guide to the Social Sciences
Every social system has a structure, and it is this that accounts for much of the differences between systems and the patterns of human experience and behavior that constitute what we know as social life.

From Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology
The systematic reflection on the nature of society and social relationships, social theory is intimately tied to the fate of sociology as a discipline concerned with the empirical study of social life.

At a socio-political level, a society is an extended group of individuals residing within a bounded geographic area, subject to common political authority and law, has mutual institutions, and shares a distinctive culture. At a broader level, a society is any social grouping that comes together, or is lumped together, on the basis of some shared characteristic or interest.

Scientific study of human social behavior. As the study of humans in their collective aspect, sociology is concerned with all group activities—economic, social, political, and religious.

Conflict theory in sociology emphasizes struggles over resources and the formation of groups and social cleavages that may lead to organized conflict.

Behaviour or action that is punishable by criminal law. A crime is a public, as opposed to a moral, wrong; it is an offence committed against (and hence punishable by) the state or the community at large. Many crimes are immoral, but not all actions considered immoral are illegal.

In its most restricted form [ethnicity] refers to a group’s shared biological origins; in its broader definition it more closely resembles the concept of nationality.

The notion of gender can be understood to be referring to the cultural assumptions and practices that govern the social construction of men, women and their social relations.

A political system through which a body of people is administered and regulated.

Set of ideas, beliefs, and opinions about the nature of people and society, providing a framework for a theory about how people should live, as well as how society is or should be organized. A nation's ideology is usually reflected in the political system it creates.

In everyday language, class refers to social groupings based on similar occupational conditions that have the same access to economic, social, and political resources.

Social inequality is used to describe the varying levels of group and individual access to resources and power in a given society.

Or public charity, organized provision of educational, cultural, medical, and financial assistance to the needy....

Conflict theorizing originated in Europe in the works of Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Georg Simmel.

From The Social Science Jargon-Buster
A sociological perspective that focuses on the contributions any particular social unit makes towards the larger social system.

Perhaps no other modern idea has spread as quickly and as widely as the sociopolitical ideas of the 19th-century thinker Karl Marx (1818-1883).

From Collins Dictionary Of Sociology
The doctrine formulated by Comte which asserts that the only true knowledge is scientific knowledge.

Social constructivism with respect to a given phenomenon is the view that the latter does not possess an independent existence but is “constructed”—that is, generated and maintained through collective human action, thought, discourse, or other social practices.

From Reader's Guide to the Social Sciences
Structuralism is the approach which seeks to isolate, and decode, deep structures of meaning, organised through systems of signs inherent in human behaviour (language, ritual, dress and so on).

From The Social Science Jargon-Buster
Sociological perspective that focuses on the way individuals interpret social symbols.

Utilitarians judge the moral value of acts, institutions and/or rules according to their consequences.

French philosopher, founder of the school of philosophy known as positivism , educated in Paris.

German founder of modern communism, in England from 1849. With Engels, he wrote The Communist Manifesto (1848). He developed his theories of the class struggle and the economics of capitalism in Das Kapital (1867; 1885; 1895).

Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, evolutionist, and political theorist, whose theories treated the universe and time in general with scientific minuteness and a synthesis of speculation and positivism.

Weber is considered to be a key founding figure in the history of sociology. Broadly trained in economics, history, law, and philosophy, Weber brought to his sociological work a complex and rich perspective on social life.

The study of crime, society's response to it, and its prevention, including examination of the environmental, hereditary, or psychological causes of crime, modes of criminal investigation and conviction, and the efficacy of punishment or correction (see prison) as compared with forms of treatment or rehabilitation.

Economic sociology (or the sociology of economic phenomena) is situated at the intersection between economics and sociology. Its intellectual origins can be traced back to the work of Marx, Weber, and Durkheim at the end of the 19th century.

From The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology
Phenomenology is the study of conscious human experience in everyday life. As first developed by Alfred Schutz, phenomenological sociology is the study of the connection between human consciousness and social life.

From Collins Dictionary of Sociology
The branch of sociology concerned with the study of politics or the political subsystems of society.

From Cambridge dictionary of sociology
Social psychology continues to straddle the border between sociology and psychology. However, despite a number of theoretical concerns in common, sociological social psychology and psychological social psychology remain largely independent endeavors.

From The Social Science Jargon-Buster
The study of the biological and evolutionary base of social behaviour.

The study of language as it affects and is affected by social relations. Sociolinguistics encompasses a broad range of concerns.

From Collins Dictionary of Sociology
The study of social relationships and structures in the city

The study of humankind. It investigates the cultural, social, and physical diversity of the human species, both past and present.

Study of how human beings allocate scarce resources to produce various commodities and how those commodities are distributed for consumption among the people in society.

Political science studies the distribution of power in different polities; the sources of power; how, when, and by whom it is exercised; as well as who gains and who loses in power struggles.

Science or study of the thought processes and behavior of humans and other animals in their interaction with the environment. Psychologists study processes of sense perception, thinking, learning, cognition, emotions and motivations, personality, abnormal behavior, interactions between individuals, and interactions with the environment.

The primary goal of social studies curriculum is to equip students with the knowledge and skills to become active participants in society.