Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Social Science
Chapter 1
Chapter Overview
Is civility in decline?
What are the costs of uncivil behavior in the community, nation, world?
A range of formations outside the public and private sectors make up civil
society:
Community groups
Voluntary organizations
Charities
Trade unions
Areas of study
Social science deals with all aspects of the group life of human beings
Areas of study
exist
Humanities deals with the literature, art, music, and philosophy humans
create
What is social science?
Goal is to understand society learn the conditions that limit our lives as
well as the opportunities open to us to improve the human condition
Social science subdivisions
Social science, although a relatively young area of study, is too vast a field
for one person to master all of it
Anthropology
Sociology
History
Geography
Economics
Political Science
Psychology
Social science subdivisions
Social sciences are also related to the natural sciences and humanities
One goal is to know each of the components and how they are interrelated
Abstraction
How can the rules of the various social sciences fit together?
This will help social scientists strive for an understanding of synthesis
Anthropology
Physical anthropology
Cultural anthropology
Functionalism
Conflict
Interactionism
History
Study of the natural environment and how it influences social and cultural
development
Ecology
Climate
Resources
Accessibility
Demography
Economics
Social organization through which we satisfy our wants for scare goods
and services
Production
Distribution
Consumption
Political Science
Politics
Laws
International relations
Psychology
Biological structure
Probably the most important tool you can have in studying social science
Enables you to learn the lessons of the individual social sciences, but also
helps go beyond and strive for an understanding of their synthesis
Natural experiments
A good social scientist takes an agnostic position (not believing, but also
not disbelieving)
The Scientific Method
Observe
Draw conclusions
Approaches to Problems
Functionalist Theory
Exchange Theory
Conflict Theory
Symbolic Interaction
Individuals derive meaning from the symbols they learn from reality
reflects less what people do and more what they think and feel
Alternative Methods
Historical Method
Trace the principal past developments that seem to have directly brought
about the current situation
Case Method
Comparative Method
Cross-Cultural Method
Helps us fit the small pieces of the puzzle into the bigger picture
Statistics
Useful functions
Test theories
Discover relationships
Interdisciplinary approach