What is Sociology

Sociology (from Latin: socitus, “companion”; and the suffix -ology, “the study of”, from Greek λόγος, lógos, “knowledge”) is the systematic and scientific study of society and societal behavior. Sociological research ranges from the analysis of brief contacts between anonymous individuals on the street to the study of global social processes. Numerous fields within the discipline concentrate on how and why people are organized in society, either as individuals or as members of associations, groups, and institutions. As an academic discipline, sociology is most often considered as a branch of social science. Sociology is the new discipline which study social structure and patterns, relations and interactions, agencies and institutions, etc. of the society. “Sociology is the study of meaningful social actions” Sociology is a cluster of disciplines which seek to explain the dimensions of society and the dynamics that societies operate upon. Some of these disciplines which reflect current fields of Sociology are demography, which studies changes in a population size or type; criminology, which studies criminal behavior and deviance; social stratification, which studies inequality and class structure; political sociology which studies government and laws; sociology of race and sociology of gender which examine the social construction of race and gender as well as race and gender inequality. New sociological fields and sub-fields—such as network analysis and environmental sociology—continue to evolve; many of them are very cross-disciplinary in nature.

Sociological research provides educators, planners, lawmakers, administrators, developers, business leaders, and people interested in resolving social problems and formulating public policy with rationales for the actions that they take.

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