The “Science” and the “Social” Behind the Study of Society
Learning Objective • To define Social Science as the study of society and explain what consists Social Science
Key Understanding
Understand the meaning of Social Science as the study of society and what consists Social Science and appreciate their differences and collective objectives
Key Question
What is Social Science and its disciplines?
What is Social Science? • Social Science is a body of knowledge characterized by an objective to understand what society is and what does it do to people living inside it. • This is a group of rather independent disciplines—with its own respective philosophies, intellectual histories, and research methodologies—but are fundamentally bound together because they deal after all with the same entity that is called “society.” • Hence, the word “social” situates the whole discipline in people and their social contexts. Whenever there are people and matters or issues that affect them, social science comes to the fore.
What is Social Science? • Another point that is equally important is that social science deals with people, with the idea of being “human • Traditionally, social science disciplines most associated with humanities are the following: history, anthropology (including archaeology), and linguistics because they all deal with the human past and touch on the meaning of being human, which makes the whole exercise border abstraction and subjectivity. • Traditionally, too, social science subject areas that are most associated with empirical research and aims are the following: economics, sociology, psychology, political science, and demography.
Fundamental Concepts of Social Science Theories Fundamental Concepts
What does Social Science emphasize?
Individual
Social actors, and active, mindful, and conscious decision makers
Nature
Environment; social structures that provide the physical and biological as well as the social context of collective action or social phenomena
Culture
Shared and collective actions, ideas, and values that are demonstrated, exhibited, produced, and reproduced by a particular group of people and communicated through symbols including language
Fundamental Concepts of Social Science Theories Fundamental Concepts
What does Social Science emphasize?
Social Structure
Patterns of behavior and interaction, which have been institutionalized over time; result of human interaction with one another and with the “social world” and “natural world”
Action
Decisions, activities, and interactions made by human beings in the context of their particular social world and conditioned by their collective consciousness
Social Science Disciplines • Social science disciplines pose different questions but they actually observe a common social phenomenon— everyday life events and activities that involve people and affect people living together in a particular society. • Since there are two elements constituting social science, one is society (hence, social) and the other is empirical analysis (hence, science) • The study and understanding of social phenomena presuppose or require an assumption that there is a reality out there that must be understood.
Social Science Disciplines • Anthropology deals with the nature of human beings, both from a biological and cultural point of view. For anthropologists, culture is a key factor that shapes human nature and that this culture is conditioned by both natural and social environments.
• Sociology, a close relative of anthropology, deals with how people behave and interact with one another as a member of a particular social group. It focuses on structures that underlie society itself and theorizes about the processes in which people are socialized in the world in which they live.
Social Science Disciplines • Demography deals with population as a unit of analysis. Demographic processes such as birth migration and aging are investigated because they impact on how society changes across a period of time.
• Economics, thought at times separated from the other social sciences due to its emphasis on quantitative analysis and mathematical equations as representations of social behavior, focuses on markets, wealth, and resources that people construct and make use of in order to live. Given the limited resources, economists study how these resources are allocated among the people and how they affect the material condition of society.
Social Science Disciplines • Geography, on one hand, insists that it is the environment or the location of the people—a condition that exists outside of people—that ultimately conditions the way people will behave in society. The proximity to certain geographic locations determines the kind of society that will be formed or created over a period of time.
• Psychology pushes the discussion further by asserting that what is going on within the individual mind or the psyche—one’s feelings, joys, fears, worries, triumphs, and struggles—does shape the way he/she views society and thus impacts on his/her relationship with people and the environment.
Social Science Disciplines • History interprets that the past is part and parcel of the present as events that happened in the past shape the way people make their decisions in the present.
• Language, a product of human race’s biological and cultural heritage, is an invention by people yet they themselves are shaped by it.
• Political science believes that it is politics or the political realm that captures human life.
• Social science, for all intents and purposes, is as much a collective and coherent framework of social inquiry as it is a diverse field of intellectual study. We only have to appreciate its value as a potent tool of both understanding and transforming human condition in this world. • Social science is interested in telling us what it means to be human.
