社会科学

Hashtags #社会科学

社会科学歴史etブランチ

社会科学はある支店科学の研究に専念し、社会の関係の中で個人のものを社会の中。この用語は、以前は 19 世紀に確立された元の「社会の科学」である社会学の分野を指すために使用されていました。社会学に加えて、それは今の幅広い網羅学問分野を含め、人類学考古学経済学人文地理学言語学経営学メディア論を政治学心理学歴史。(社会科学内のサブディシプリンのより詳細なリストについては、「社会科学の概要」を参照してください。)

実証主義の社会科学者は、社会を理解するためのツールとして自然科学に類似した方法を使用するため、より厳密な現代的な意味で科学を定義します。対照的に、解釈主義の社会科学者は、経験的に反証可能な理論を構築するのではなく、社会批評や象徴的な解釈を使用する可能性があり、したがって、科学をより広い意味で扱います。現代の学術的実践では、研究者はしばしば折ec的であり、複数の方法論を使用します (たとえば、定量的および定性的研究の両方を組み合わせるなど)。「社会調査」という用語も、さまざまな分野の実践者が同じ目的と方法を共有しているため、ある程度の自律性を獲得しています。

初期の国勢調査と調査では、人口統計データが提供されました。

社会科学の歴史は1650 年以降の啓蒙時代[1] に始まり[1]自然哲学に革命が起こり、個人が「科学的」なものを理解するための基本的な枠組みが変わった。社会科学は、当時の道徳哲学から生まれ、産業革命フランス革命などの革命時代の影響を受けました。[2]社会科学から開発科学実験及び適用)、または系統的な知識ベース又は規範プラクティスに関連する社会的な改善相互作用エンティティのグループ[3] [4]

18 世紀の社会科学の始まりは、ジャン=ジャック・ルソーやその他の先駆者による記事とともに、ディドロの壮大な百科事典に反映されています。社会科学の成長は、他の専門百科事典にも反映されています。近代では、「社会科学」が最初に明確な概念分野として使用されました。[5]社会科学は実証主義の影響を受けました。[2]実際の肯定的な感覚の経験に基づいた知識に焦点を当て、否定的なものを避けました。形而上学的な推測は避けられました。オーギュスト・コントは、シャルル・フーリエの考えに基づいて、この分野を説明するために「科学社会」という用語を使用しました。コンテはこの分野を社会物理学とも呼んだ。[2] [6]

この時期に続いて、他の分野でのコントの影響を受けて、社会科学において 5 つの発展の道が生まれました。[2]取られた 1 つのルートは、社会調査の台頭でした。大規模な統計調査が、米国とヨーロッパのさまざまな地域で行われました。着手された別のルートは、「社会的事実」を研究するエミール・デュルケムと、メタ理論的なアイデアと個々の理論を開いたヴィルフレド・パレートによって開始されました。存在する方法論的二分法から生じた第三の手段が開発され、社会現象が識別され、理解された。これは、マックス ウェーバーなどの人物によって支持されました。経済学に基づいて取られた 4 番目のルートは、ハード サイエンスとしての経済知識を開発および促進しました。最後のパスは、知識と社会的価値の相関関係でした。マックス・ウェーバーの反ポジティブ主義と理解社会学は、この区別を強く要求しました。このルートでは、理論 (説明) と処方箋は、主題の非重複の形式的な議論でした。

西洋における社会科学の基礎は、知識の進歩的領域と伝統的領域の間の条件付きの関係を意味します。イタリアのようないくつかの文脈では、社会学はゆっくりとそれ自体を肯定し、哲学と神学を超えた戦略的知識を肯定することの難しさを経験する (Cfr. Guglielmo Rinzivillo, La scienza e l'oggetto. Autocritica del sapere strategyo , Milan, Franco Angeli 編集者、2010、p. 51、たとえばISBN  978-88-568-2487-2 )。

20世紀の初め頃、啓蒙思想は様々な方面で挑戦されました。科学革命の終焉以来、古典的な理論が使用された後、さまざまな分野が実験的研究や方程式の調査のために数学の研究を置き換えて理論構造を構築しました。社会科学のサブフィールドの開発は、方法論において非常に定量的なものになりました。人間の行動、それに影響を与える社会的および環境的要因に対する科学的調査の学際的かつ学際的な性質により、多くの自然科学が社会科学方法論のいくつかの側面に関心を寄せました。[7]境界ぼかしの例には、医学の社会調査、社会生物学、神経心理学、生物経済学、科学の歴史と社会学などの新興分野が含まれます。定量的研究と定性的方法は、人間の行動とその影響と結果の研究にますます統合されています。20 世紀の前半に、統計は応用数学の独立した学問領域になりました。統計的手法は自信を持って使用されました。

現代では、カール・ポパーとタルコット・パーソンズは社会科学の推進に影響を与えました。[2]研究者は、提案された「グランド理論」を、大規模で成長しているデータバンクに使用可能なフレームワークを提供し続けるさまざまなミッドレンジ理論と、提案された「グランド理論」を結び付ける力と洗練を備えた方法論について、統一されたコンセンサスを探し続けています。 ; 詳細については、consilience を参照してください。近い将来、社会科学は、その分野の研究におけるさまざまな領域で構成され、場合によってはその分野へのアプローチが異なるものになるでしょう。[2]

「社会科学」という用語は、コント、デュルケーム、マルクス、ウェーバーなどの思想家によって確立された社会の特定の科学、またはより一般的には「高貴な科学」と芸術以外のすべての分野を指す場合があります。19 世紀後半までに、学術社会科学は 5 つの分野で構成されていました。法学と法改正、教育、健康、経済と貿易、芸術です。[3]

21 世紀の初め頃、社会科学における経済学の拡大する領域は、経済帝国主義と呼ばれてきました。[8]

The social science disciplines are branches of knowledge taught and researched at the college or university level. Social science disciplines are defined and recognized by the academic journals in which research is published, and the learned social science societies and academic departments or faculties to which their practitioners belong. Social science fields of study usually have several sub-disciplines or branches, and the distinguishing lines between these are often both arbitrary and ambiguous.

Anthropology

Anthropology is the holistic "science of man", a science of the totality of human existence. The discipline deals with the integration of different aspects of the social sciences, humanities, and human biology. In the twentieth century, academic disciplines have often been institutionally divided into three broad domains. The natural sciences seek to derive general laws through reproducible and verifiable experiments. The humanities generally study local traditions, through their history, literature, music, and arts, with an emphasis on understanding particular individuals, events, or eras. The social sciences have generally attempted to develop scientific methods to understand social phenomena in a generalizable way, though usually with methods distinct from those of the natural sciences.

The anthropological social sciences often develop nuanced descriptions rather than the general laws derived in physics or chemistry, or they may explain individual cases through more general principles, as in many fields of psychology. Anthropology (like some fields of history) does not easily fit into one of these categories, and different branches of anthropology draw on one or more of these domains.[9] Within the United States, anthropology is divided into four sub-fields: archaeology, physical or biological anthropology, anthropological linguistics, and cultural anthropology. It is an area that is offered at most undergraduate institutions. The word anthropos (ἄνθρωπος) in Ancient Greek means "human being" or "person". Eric Wolf described sociocultural anthropology as "the most scientific of the humanities, and the most humanistic of the sciences".

The goal of anthropology is to provide a holistic account of humans and human nature. This means that, though anthropologists generally specialize in only one sub-field, they always keep in mind the biological, linguistic, historic and cultural aspects of any problem. Since anthropology arose as a science in Western societies that were complex and industrial, a major trend within anthropology has been a methodological drive to study peoples in societies with more simple social organization, sometimes called "primitive" in anthropological literature, but without any connotation of "inferior".[10] Today, anthropologists use terms such as "less complex" societies or refer to specific modes of subsistence or production, such as "pastoralist" or "forager" or "horticulturalist" to refer to humans living in non-industrial, non-Western cultures, such people or folk (ethnos) remaining of great interest within anthropology.

The quest for holism leads most anthropologists to study a people in detail, using biogenetic, archaeological, and linguistic data alongside direct observation of contemporary customs.[11] In the 1990s and 2000s, calls for clarification of what constitutes a culture, of how an observer knows where his or her own culture ends and another begins, and other crucial topics in writing anthropology were heard. It is possible to view all human cultures as part of one large, evolving global culture. These dynamic relationships, between what can be observed on the ground, as opposed to what can be observed by compiling many local observations remain fundamental in any kind of anthropology, whether cultural, biological, linguistic or archaeological.[12]

Communication studies

Communication studies deals with processes of human communication, commonly defined as the sharing of symbols to create meaning. The discipline encompasses a range of topics, from face-to-face conversation to mass media outlets such as television broadcasting. Communication studies also examines how messages are interpreted through the political, cultural, economic, and social dimensions of their contexts. Communication is institutionalized under many different names at different universities, including "communication", "communication studies", "speech communication", "rhetorical studies", "communication science", "media studies", "communication arts", "mass communication", "media ecology", and "communication and media science".

Communication studies integrates aspects of both social sciences and the humanities. As a social science, the discipline often overlaps with sociology, psychology, anthropology, biology, political science, economics, and public policy, among others. From a humanities perspective, communication is concerned with rhetoric and persuasion (traditional graduate programs in communication studies trace their history to the rhetoricians of Ancient Greece). The field applies to outside disciplines as well, including engineering, architecture, mathematics, and information science.

Economics

Economics is a social science that seeks to analyze and describe the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth.[13] The word "economics" is from the Ancient Greek οἶκος oikos, "family, household, estate", and νόμος nomos, "custom, law", and hence means "household management" or "management of the state". An economist is a person using economic concepts and data in the course of employment, or someone who has earned a degree in the subject. The classic brief definition of economics, set out by Lionel Robbins in 1932, is "the science which studies human behavior as a relation between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses". Without scarcity and alternative uses, there is no economic problem. Briefer yet is "the study of how people seek to satisfy needs and wants" and "the study of the financial aspects of human behavior".

Economics has two broad branches: microeconomics, where the unit of analysis is the individual agent, such as a household or firm, and macroeconomics, where the unit of analysis is an economy as a whole. Another division of the subject distinguishes positive economics, which seeks to predict and explain economic phenomena, from normative economics, which orders choices and actions by some criterion; such orderings necessarily involve subjective value judgments. Since the early part of the 20th century, economics has focused largely on measurable quantities, employing both theoretical models and empirical analysis. Quantitative models, however, can be traced as far back as the physiocratic school. Economic reasoning has been increasingly applied in recent decades to other social situations such as politics, law, psychology, history, religion, marriage and family life, and other social interactions.

This paradigm crucially assumes (1) that resources are scarce because they are not sufficient to satisfy all wants, and (2) that "economic value" is willingness to pay as revealed for instance by market (arms' length) transactions. Rival heterodox schools of thought, such as institutional economics, green economics, Marxist economics, and economic sociology, make other grounding assumptions. For example, Marxist economics assumes that economics primarily deals with the investigation of exchange value, of which human labour is the source.

The expanding domain of economics in the social sciences has been described as economic imperialism.[8][14]

Education

A depiction of world's oldest university, the University of Bologna, in Italy

Education encompasses teaching and learning specific skills, and also something less tangible but more profound: the imparting of knowledge, positive judgement and well-developed wisdom. Education has as one of its fundamental aspects the imparting of culture from generation to generation (see socialization). To educate means 'to draw out', from the Latin educare, or to facilitate the realization of an individual's potential and talents. It is an application of pedagogy, a body of theoretical and applied research relating to teaching and learning and draws on many disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, sociology and anthropology.[15]

The education of an individual human begins at birth and continues throughout life. (Some believe that education begins even before birth, as evidenced by some parents' playing music or reading to the baby in the womb in the hope it will influence the child's development.) For some, the struggles and triumphs of daily life provide far more instruction than does formal schooling (thus Mark Twain's admonition to "never let school interfere with your education").

Geography

Map of the Earth

Geography as a discipline can be split broadly into two main sub fields: human geography and physical geography. The former focuses largely on the built environment and how space is created, viewed and managed by humans as well as the influence humans have on the space they occupy. This may involve cultural geography, transportation, health, military operations, and cities. The latter examines the natural environment and how the climate, vegetation and life, soil, oceans, water and landforms are produced and interact.[16] Physical geography examines phenomena related to the measurement of earth. As a result of the two subfields using different approaches a third field has emerged, which is environmental geography. Environmental geography combines physical and human geography and looks at the interactions between the environment and humans.[17] Other branches of geography include social geography, regional geography, and geomatics.

Geographers attempt to understand the Earth in terms of physical and spatial relationships. The first geographers focused on the science of mapmaking and finding ways to precisely project the surface of the earth. In this sense, geography bridges some gaps between the natural sciences and social sciences. Historical geography is often taught in a college in a unified Department of Geography.

Modern geography is an all-encompassing discipline, closely related to GISc, that seeks to understand humanity and its natural environment. The fields of urban planning, regional science, and planetology are closely related to geography. Practitioners of geography use many technologies and methods to collect data such as GIS, remote sensing, aerial photography, statistics, and global positioning systems (GPS).

History

History is the continuous, systematic narrative and research into past human events as interpreted through historiographical paradigms or theories.

History has a base in both the social sciences and the humanities. In the United States the National Endowment for the Humanities includes history in its definition of humanities (as it does for applied linguistics).[18] However, the National Research Council classifies history as a social science.[19] The historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which historians use primary sources and other evidence to research and then to write history. The Social Science History Association, formed in 1976, brings together scholars from numerous disciplines interested in social history.[20]

Law

A trial at a criminal court, the Old Bailey in London

The social science of law, jurisprudence, in common parlance, means a rule that (unlike a rule of ethics) is capable of enforcement through institutions.[21] However, many laws are based on norms accepted by a community and thus have an ethical foundation. The study of law crosses the boundaries between the social sciences and humanities, depending on one's view of research into its objectives and effects. Law is not always enforceable, especially in the international relations context. It has been defined as a "system of rules",[22] as an "interpretive concept"[23] to achieve justice, as an "authority"[24] to mediate people's interests, and even as "the command of a sovereign, backed by the threat of a sanction".[25] However one likes to think of law, it is a completely central social institution. Legal policy incorporates the practical manifestation of thinking from almost every social science and the humanities. Laws are politics, because politicians create them. Law is philosophy, because moral and ethical persuasions shape their ideas. Law tells many of history's stories, because statutes, case law and codifications build up over time. And law is economics, because any rule about contract, tort, property law, labour law, company law and many more can have long-lasting effects on the distribution of wealth. The noun law derives from the late Old English lagu, meaning something laid down or fixed[26] and the adjective legal comes from the Latin word lex.[27]

Linguistics

Ferdinand de Saussure, recognized as the father of modern linguistics

Linguistics investigates the cognitive and social aspects of human language. The field is divided into areas that focus on aspects of the linguistic signal, such as syntax (the study of the rules that govern the structure of sentences), semantics (the study of meaning), morphology (the study of the structure of words), phonetics (the study of speech sounds) and phonology (the study of the abstract sound system of a particular language); however, work in areas like evolutionary linguistics (the study of the origins and evolution of language) and psycholinguistics (the study of psychological factors in human language) cut across these divisions.

The overwhelming majority of modern research in linguistics takes a predominantly synchronic perspective (focusing on language at a particular point in time), and a great deal of it—partly owing to the influence of Noam Chomsky—aims at formulating theories of the cognitive processing of language. However, language does not exist in a vacuum, or only in the brain, and approaches like contact linguistics, creole studies, discourse analysis, social interactional linguistics, and sociolinguistics explore language in its social context. Sociolinguistics often makes use of traditional quantitative analysis and statistics in investigating the frequency of features, while some disciplines, like contact linguistics, focus on qualitative analysis. While certain areas of linguistics can thus be understood as clearly falling within the social sciences, other areas, like acoustic phonetics and neurolinguistics, draw on the natural sciences. Linguistics draws only secondarily on the humanities, which played a rather greater role in linguistic inquiry in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Ferdinand Saussure is considered the father of modern linguistics.

Political science

Aristotle asserted that man is a political animal in his Politics. [28]

Political science is an academic and research discipline that deals with the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behaviour. Fields and subfields of political science include political economy, political theory and philosophy, civics and comparative politics, theory of direct democracy, apolitical governance, participatory direct democracy, national systems, cross-national political analysis, political development, international relations, foreign policy, international law, politics, public administration, administrative behaviour, public law, judicial behaviour, and public policy. Political science also studies power in international relations and the theory of great powers and superpowers.

Political science is methodologically diverse, although recent years have witnessed an upsurge in the use of the scientific method,[29][page needed] that is, the proliferation of formal-deductive model building and quantitative hypothesis testing. Approaches to the discipline include rational choice, classical political philosophy, interpretivism, structuralism, and behaviouralism, realism, pluralism, and institutionalism. Political science, as one of the social sciences, uses methods and techniques that relate to the kinds of inquiries sought: primary sources such as historical documents, interviews, and official records, as well as secondary sources such as scholarly articles, are used in building and testing theories. Empirical methods include survey research, statistical analysis or econometrics, case studies, experiments, and model building. Herbert Baxter Adams is credited with coining the phrase "political science" while teaching history at Johns Hopkins University.

Psychology

Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt was the founder of experimental psychology.

Psychology is an academic and applied field involving the study of behaviour and mental processes. Psychology also refers to the application of such knowledge to various spheres of human activity, including problems of individuals' daily lives and the treatment of mental illness. The word psychology comes from the Ancient Greek ψυχή psyche ("soul", "mind") and logy ("study").

Psychology differs from anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology in seeking to capture explanatory generalizations about the mental function and overt behaviour of individuals, while the other disciplines focus on creating descriptive generalizations about the functioning of social groups or situation-specific human behaviour. In practice, however, there is quite a lot of cross-fertilization that takes place among the various fields. Psychology differs from biology and neuroscience in that it is primarily concerned with the interaction of mental processes and behaviour, and of the overall processes of a system, and not simply the biological or neural processes themselves, though the subfield of neuropsychology combines the study of the actual neural processes with the study of the mental effects they have subjectively produced. Many people associate psychology with clinical psychology, which focuses on assessment and treatment of problems in living and psychopathology. In reality, psychology has myriad specialties including social psychology, developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, educational psychology, industrial-organizational psychology, mathematical psychology, neuropsychology, and quantitative analysis of behaviour.

Psychology is a very broad science that is rarely tackled as a whole, major block. Although some subfields encompass a natural science base and a social science application, others can be clearly distinguished as having little to do with the social sciences or having a lot to do with the social sciences. For example, biological psychology is considered a natural science with a social scientific application (as is clinical medicine), social and occupational psychology are, generally speaking, purely social sciences, whereas neuropsychology is a natural science that lacks application out of the scientific tradition entirely. In British universities, emphasis on what tenet of psychology a student has studied and/or concentrated is communicated through the degree conferred: B.Psy. indicates a balance between natural and social sciences, B.Sc. indicates a strong (or entire) scientific concentration, whereas a B.A. underlines a majority of social science credits. This is not always necessarily the case however, and in many UK institutions students studying the B.Psy, B.Sc, and B.A. follow the same curriculum as outlined by The British Psychological Society and have the same options of specialism open to them regardless of whether they choose a balance, a heavy science basis, or heavy social science basis to their degree. If they applied to read the B.A. for example, but specialized in heavily science-based modules, then they will still generally be awarded the B.A.

Sociology

Émile Durkheim is considered one of the founding fathers of sociology.

Sociology is the systematic study of society, individuals' relationship to their societies, the consequences of difference, and other aspects of human social action.[30] The meaning of the word comes from the suffix "-logy", which means "study of", derived from Ancient Greek, and the stem "soci-", which is from the Latin word socius, meaning "companion", or society in general.

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) coined the term, Sociology, as a way to apply natural science principles and techniques to the social world in 1838.[31][32] Comte endeavoured to unify history, psychology and economics through the descriptive understanding of the social realm. He proposed that social ills could be remedied through sociological positivism, an epistemological approach outlined in The Course in Positive Philosophy [1830–1842] and A General View of Positivism (1844). Though Comte is generally regarded as the "Father of Sociology", the discipline was formally established by another French thinker, Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), who developed positivism as a foundation to practical social research. Durkheim set up the first European department of sociology at the University of Bordeaux in 1895, publishing his Rules of the Sociological Method. In 1896, he established the journal L'Année Sociologique. Durkheim's seminal monograph, Suicide (1897), a case study of suicide rates among Catholic and Protestant populations, distinguished sociological analysis from psychology or philosophy.[33]

Karl Marx rejected Comte's positivism but nevertheless aimed to establish a science of society based on historical materialism, becoming recognized as a founding figure of sociology posthumously as the term gained broader meaning. Around the start of the 20th century, the first wave of German sociologists, including Max Weber and Georg Simmel, developed sociological antipositivism. The field may be broadly recognized as an amalgam of three modes of social thought in particular: Durkheimian positivism and structural functionalism; Marxist historical materialism and conflict theory; and Weberian antipositivism and verstehen analysis. American sociology broadly arose on a separate trajectory, with little Marxist influence, an emphasis on rigorous experimental methodology, and a closer association with pragmatism and social psychology. In the 1920s, the Chicago school developed symbolic interactionism. Meanwhile, in the 1930s, the Frankfurt School pioneered the idea of critical theory, an interdisciplinary form of Marxist sociology drawing upon thinkers as diverse as Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche. Critical theory would take on something of a life of its own after World War II, influencing literary criticism and the Birmingham School establishment of cultural studies.

Sociology evolved as an academic response to the challenges of modernity, such as industrialization, urbanization, secularization, and a perceived process of enveloping rationalization.[34] The field generally concerns the social rules and processes that bind and separate people not only as individuals, but as members of associations, groups, communities and institutions, and includes the examination of the organization and development of human social life. The sociological field of interest ranges from the analysis of short contacts between anonymous individuals on the street to the study of global social processes. In the terms of sociologists Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, social scientists seek an understanding of the Social Construction of Reality. Most sociologists work in one or more subfields. One useful way to describe the discipline is as a cluster of sub-fields that examine different dimensions of society. For example, social stratification studies inequality and class structure; demography studies changes in a population size or type; criminology examines criminal behaviour and deviance; and political sociology studies the interaction between society and state.

Since its inception, sociological epistemologies, methods, and frames of enquiry, have significantly expanded and diverged.[35] Sociologists use a diversity of research methods, collect both quantitative and qualitative data, draw upon empirical techniques, and engage critical theory.[32] Common modern methods include case studies, historical research, interviewing, participant observation, social network analysis, survey research, statistical analysis, and model building, among other approaches. Since the late 1970s, many sociologists have tried to make the discipline useful for purposes beyond the academy. The results of sociological research aid educators, lawmakers, administrators, developers, and others interested in resolving social problems and formulating public policy, through subdisciplinary areas such as evaluation research, methodological assessment, and public sociology.

In the early 1970s, women sociologists began to question sociological paradigms and the invisibility of women in sociological studies, analysis, and courses.[36] In 1969, feminist sociologists challenged the discipline's androcentrism at the American Sociological Association's annual conference.[37] This led to the founding of the organization Sociologists for Women in Society, and, eventually, a new sociology journal, Gender & Society. Today, the sociology of gender is considered to be one of the most prominent sub-fields in the discipline.

New sociological sub-fields continue to appear — such as community studies, computational sociology, environmental sociology, network analysis, actor-network theory, gender studies, and a growing list, many of which are cross-disciplinary in nature.[38]

Additional applied or interdisciplinary fields related to the social sciences include:

  • Archaeology is the science that studies human cultures through the recovery, documentation, analysis, and interpretation of material remains and environmental data, including architecture, artifacts, features, biofacts, and landscapes.
  • Area studies are interdisciplinary fields of research and scholarship pertaining to particular geographical, national/federal, or cultural regions.
  • Behavioural science is a term that encompasses all the disciplines that explore the activities of and interactions among organisms in the natural world.
  • Computational social science is an umbrella field encompassing computational approaches within the social sciences.
  • Demography is the statistical study of all human populations.
  • Development studies a multidisciplinary branch of social science that addresses issues of concern to developing countries.
  • Environmental social science is the broad, transdisciplinary study of interrelations between humans and the natural environment.
  • Environmental studies integrate social, humanistic, and natural science perspectives on the relation between humans and the natural environment.
  • Gender studies integrates several social and natural sciences to study gender identity, masculinity, femininity, transgender issues, and sexuality.
  • Information science is an interdisciplinary science primarily concerned with the collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information.
  • International studies covers both International relations (the study of foreign affairs and global issues among states within the international system) and International education (the comprehensive approach that intentionally prepares people to be active and engaged participants in an interconnected world).
  • Legal management is a social sciences discipline that is designed for students interested in the study of state and legal elements.
  • Library science is an interdisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools of management, information technology, education, and other areas to libraries; the collection, organization, preservation and dissemination of information resources; and the political economy of information.
  • Management consists of various levels of leadership and administration of an organization in all business and human organizations. It is the effective execution of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives through adequate planning, executing and controlling activities.
  • Marketing the identification of human needs and wants, defines and measures their magnitude for demand and understanding the process of consumer buying behaviour to formulate products and services, pricing, promotion and distribution to satisfy these needs and wants through exchange processes and building long-term relationships.
  • Political economy is the study of production, buying and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government.
  • Public administration is one of the main branches of political science, and can be broadly described as the development, implementation and study of branches of government policy. The pursuit of the public good by enhancing civil society and social justice is the ultimate goal of the field. Though public administration has been historically referred to as government management,[39] it increasingly encompasses non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that also operate with a similar, primary dedication to the betterment of humanity.
  • Religious studies and Western esoteric studies incorporate and inform social-scientific research on phenomena broadly deemed religious. Religious studies, Western esoteric studies, and the social sciences developed in dialogue with one another.[40]

Social research

The origin of the survey can be traced back at least early as the Domesday Book in 1086,[41][42] while some scholars pinpoint the origin of demography to 1663 with the publication of John Graunt's Natural and Political Observations upon the Bills of Mortality.[43] Social research began most intentionally, however, with the positivist philosophy of science in the 19th century.

In contemporary usage, "social research" is a relatively autonomous term, encompassing the work of practitioners from various disciplines that share in its aims and methods. Social scientists employ a range of methods in order to analyse a vast breadth of social phenomena; from census survey data derived from millions of individuals, to the in-depth analysis of a single agent's social experiences; from monitoring what is happening on contemporary streets, to the investigation of ancient historical documents. The methods originally rooted in classical sociology and statistical mathematics have formed the basis for research in other disciplines, such as political science, media studies, and marketing and market research.

Social research methods may be divided into two broad schools:

  • Quantitative designs approach social phenomena through quantifiable evidence, and often rely on statistical analysis of many cases (or across intentionally designed treatments in an experiment) to create valid and reliable general claims.
  • Qualitative designs emphasize understanding of social phenomena through direct observation, communication with participants, or analysis of texts, and may stress contextual and subjective accuracy over generality.

Social scientists will commonly combine quantitative and qualitative approaches as part of a multi-strategy design. Questionnaires, field-based data collection, archival database information and laboratory-based data collections are some of the measurement techniques used. It is noted the importance of measurement and analysis, focusing on the (difficult to achieve) goal of objective research or statistical hypothesis testing. A mathematical model uses mathematical language to describe a system. The process of developing a mathematical model is termed 'mathematical modelling' (also modeling). Eykhoff (1974) defined a mathematical model as 'a representation of the essential aspects of an existing system (or a system to be constructed) that presents knowledge of that system in usable form'.[44] Mathematical models can take many forms, including but not limited to dynamical systems, statistical models, differential equations, or game theoretic models.

These and other types of models can overlap, with a given model involving a variety of abstract structures. The system is a set of interacting or interdependent entities, real or abstract, forming an integrated whole. The concept of an integrated whole can also be stated in terms of a system embodying a set of relationships that are differentiated from relationships of the set to other elements, and from relationships between an element of the set and elements not a part of the relational regime. A dynamical system modeled as a mathematical formalization has a fixed "rule" that describes the time dependence of a point's position in its ambient space. Small changes in the state of the system correspond to small changes in the numbers. The evolution rule of the dynamical system is a fixed rule that describes what future states follow from the current state. The rule is deterministic: for a given time interval only one future state follows from the current state.

Social scientists often conduct program evaluation, which is a systematic method for collecting, analyzing, and using information to answer questions about projects, policies and programs,[45] particularly about their effectiveness and efficiency. In both the public and private sectors, stakeholders often want to know whether the programs they are funding, implementing, voting for, receiving or objecting to are producing the intended effect. While program evaluation first focuses around this definition, important considerations often include how much the program costs per participant, how the program could be improved, whether the program is worthwhile, whether there are better alternatives, if there are unintended outcomes, and whether the program goals are appropriate and useful.[46]

Theory

Some social theorists emphasize the subjective nature of research. These writers espouse social theory perspectives that include various types of the following:

  • Critical theory is the examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across social sciences and humanities disciplines.
  • Dialectical materialism is the philosophy of Karl Marx, which he formulated by taking the dialectic of Hegel and joining it to the materialism of Feuerbach.
  • Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, or philosophical discourse; it aims to understand the nature of gender inequality.
  • Marxist theories, such as revolutionary theory and class theory, cover work in philosophy that is strongly influenced by Karl Marx's materialist approach to theory or is written by Marxists.
  • Phronetic social science is a theory and methodology for doing social science focusing on ethics and political power, based on a contemporary interpretation of Aristotelian phronesis.
  • Post-colonial theory is a reaction to the cultural legacy of colonialism.
  • Postmodernism refers to a point of departure for works of literature, drama, architecture, cinema, and design, as well as in marketing and business and in the interpretation of history, law, culture and religion in the late 20th century.
  • Rational choice theory is a framework for understanding and often formally modeling social and economic behaviour.
  • Social constructionism considers how social phenomena develop in social contexts.
  • Structuralism is an approach to the human sciences that attempts to analyze a specific field (for instance, mythology) as a complex system of interrelated parts.
  • Structural functionalism is a sociological paradigm that addresses what social functions various elements of the social system perform in regard to the entire system.

Other fringe social theorists delve in alternative nature of research. These writers share social theory perspectives that include various types of the following:

  • Anti-intellectualism describes a sentiment of critique towards, or evaluation of, intellectuals and intellectual pursuits.
  • Antiscience is a position critical of science and the scientific method.

Most universities offer degrees in social science fields.[47] The Bachelor of Social Science is a degree targeted at the social sciences in particular, it is often more flexible and in-depth than other degrees that include social science subjects.[a]

In the United States, a university may offer a student who studies a social sciences field a Bachelor of Arts degree, particularly if the field is within one of the traditional liberal arts such as history, or a BSc: Bachelor of Science degree such as those given by the London School of Economics, as the social sciences constitute one of the two main branches of science (the other being the natural sciences). In addition, some institutions have degrees for a particular social science, such as the Bachelor of Economics degree, though such specialized degrees are relatively rare in the United States.

Graduate students may get a Master's degree (Master of Arts, Master of Science or a field-specific degree such as Master of Public Administration) or Ph.D.

The social sciences receive less funding than the natural sciences. It has been estimated that only 0.12% of all funding for climate-related research is spent on the social science of climate change mitigation. Vastly more funding is spent on natural science studies of climate change and considerable sums are also spent on studies of impact of and adaptation to climate change.[48] It has been argued that this is a misallocation of resources, as the most urgent puzzle at the current juncture is to work out how to change human behavior to mitigate climate change, whereas the natural science of climate change is already well established and there will be decades and centuries to handle adaptation.[48]

General

  • Culture
  • Outline of social science
  • Society
  • Structure and agency
  • National Nothing Day

Methods

  • Empiricism
  • Ethnography
  • Participatory Action Research
  • Regression
  • Representation theory
  • Scientific method
  • Statistical hypothesis testing
  • Terminology

Areas

  • Behavioural sciences
  • Geographic information science

History

  • History of technology

Lists

  • Fields of science
  • Outline of academic disciplines

People

  • Augustine
  • Peter Berger
  • Franz Boas
  • Manuel Castells
  • Noam Chomsky
  • Confucius
  • Wade Davis
  • Louis Dumont
  • Emile Durkheim
  • Norbert Elias
  • Friedrich Engels
  • Milton Friedman
  • Anthony Giddens
  • Erving Goffman
  • Maja Göpel
  • Thomas Hobbes
  • Arlie Hochschild
  • David Hume
  • Marie Jahoda
  • John Maynard Keynes
  • Paul F. Lazarsfeld
  • John Locke
  • Sir John Lubbock
  • Robert Lucas
  • Thomas Luckmann
  • Niklas Luhmann
  • Niccolò Machiavelli
  • Karl Marx
  • Marcel Mauss
  • Margaret Mead
  • John Stuart Mill
  • Baidyanath Misra
  • Montesquieu
  • Monique Borgerhoff Mulder
  • Talcott Parsons
  • Jean Piaget
  • Steven Pinker
  • Plato
  • Karl Popper
  • John Rawls
  • David Ricardo
  • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  • Jean-Baptiste Say
  • Alfred Schutz
  • B.F. Skinner
  • Adam Smith
  • Herbert Spencer
  • Deborah Tannen
  • Victor Turner
  • Max Weber
  • Paige West

Other

  • Behaviour
  • Ethology and Ethnology
  • Gulbenkian commission
  • Labelling
  • Periodic table of human sciences (Tinbergen's four questions)
  • Philosophy of social sciences

  1. ^ A Bachelor of Social Science degree can be earned at the University of Adelaide, University of Waikato (Hamilton, New Zealand), University of Sydney, University of New South Wales, University of Hong Kong, University of Manchester, Lincoln University, New Zealand, National University of Malaysia and University of Queensland.

  1. ^ Kuper, Adam (1996). The Social Science Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-415-10829-4.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Kuper, A., and Kuper, J. (1985). The Social Science Encyclopaedia.
  3. ^ a b Social sciences, Columbian Cyclopedia. (1897). Buffalo: Garretson, Cox & Company. p. 227.
  4. ^ Peck, H.T., Peabody, S.H., and Richardson, C.F. (1897). The International Cyclopedia, A Compendium of Human Knowledge. Rev. with large additions. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company.
  5. ^ William Thompson (1775–1833) (1824). An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human Happiness; applied to the Newly Proposed System of Voluntary Equality of Wealth.
  6. ^ According to Comte, the social physics field was similar to that of natural sciences.
  7. ^ Vessuri, H. (2002). "Ethical Challenges for the Social Sciences on the Threshold of the 21st Century". Current Sociology. 50: 135–50. doi:10.1177/0011392102050001010. S2CID 146455945.
  8. ^ a b Lazear, E.P. (2000). "Economic Imperialism". The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 115: 99–146. doi:10.1162/003355300554683.
  9. ^ Wallerstein, I. (2003). "Anthropology, Sociology, and Other Dubious Disciplines" (PDF). Current Anthropology. 44 (4): 453–65. doi:10.1086/375868.
  10. ^ Lowie, Robert (1924). Primitive Religion. Routledge and Sons.; Tylor, Edward (1920). Primitive Culture. New York: J.P. Putnam's Sons. Originally published 1871.
  11. ^ Nanda, Serena and Richard Warms. Culture Counts. Wadsworth. 2008. Chapter One
  12. ^ Rosaldo, Renato. Culture and Truth: The remaking of social analysis. Beacon Press. 1993; Inda, John Xavier and Renato Rosaldo. The Anthropology of Globalization. Wiley-Blackwell. 2007
  13. ^ "economics – Britannica Online Encyclopedia".
  14. ^ Becker, Gary S. (1976). The Economic Approach to Human Behavior. Links to arrow-page viewable chapter. University of Chicago Press.
  15. ^ "An overview of education".
  16. ^ "What is geography?". AAG Career Guide: Jobs in Geography and Related Geographical Sciences. Association of American Geographers. Archived from the original on October 6, 2006. Retrieved October 9, 2006.
  17. ^ Hayes-Bohanan, James. "What is Environmental Geography, Anyway?". Retrieved October 9, 2006.
  18. ^ "About NEH". National Endowment for the Humanities.
  19. ^ Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States: Continuity and Change
  20. ^ See the SSHA website
  21. ^ Robertson, Geoffrey (2006). Crimes Against Humanity. Penguin. p. 90. ISBN 978-0-14-102463-9.
  22. ^ Hart, H.L.A. (1961). The Concept of Law. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-876122-8.
  23. ^ Dworkin, Ronald (1986). Law's Empire. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-51836-0.
  24. ^ Raz, Joseph (1979). The Authority of Law. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-956268-8.
  25. ^ Austin, John (1831). The Providence of Jurisprudence Determined.
  26. ^ see Etymonline Dictionary
  27. ^ see Merriam-Webster's Dictionary
  28. ^ Ebenstein, Alan (2002). Introduction to Political Thinkers. Boston, Massachusetts: Wadsworth.
  29. ^ Hindmoor, Andrew (August 8, 2006). Rational Choice. ISBN 978-1-4039-3422-2.
  30. ^ Witt, Jon (2018). SOC 218. McGraw-Hill. p. 2. ISBN 978-1-259-70272-3.
  31. ^ A Dictionary of Sociology, Article: Comte, Auguste
  32. ^ a b Witt, Jon (2018). SOC 2018. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 978-1-259-70272-3.
  33. ^ Gianfranco Poggi (2000). Durkheim. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chapter 1.
  34. ^ Habermas, Jürgen, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Modernity's Consciousness of Time, Polity Press (1990), paperback, ISBN 0-7456-0830-2, p. 2.
  35. ^ Giddens, Anthony, Duneier, Mitchell, Applebaum, Richard. 2007. Introduction to Sociology. Sixth Edition. New York: W.W. Norton and Company. Chapter 1.
  36. ^ Lorber, Judith (1994). Paradoxes of Gender. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-06497-1.
  37. ^ Laube, Heather; Hess, Bess B. (2001). "The Founding of SWS". Sociologists for Women in Society. Retrieved February 5, 2018.
  38. ^ Vuong, Quan-Hoang (2019). The Vietnamese Social Sciences at a Fork in the Road. De Gruyter. ISBN 978-3110686081.
  39. ^ Zaki Badawi, A (2002). Dictionary of the Social Sciences – Oxford Reference. doi:10.1093/acref/9780195123715.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-512371-5.
  40. ^ Josephson-Storm, Jason (2017). The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 101–14. ISBN 978-0-226-40336-6.
  41. ^ A.H. Halsey (2004), A history of sociology in Britain: science, literature, and society, p. 34
  42. ^ Geoffrey Duncan Mitchell (1970), A new dictionary of sociology, p. 201
  43. ^ Willcox, Walter (1938) The Founder of Statistics.
  44. ^ Eykhoff, Pieter System Identification: Parameter and State Estimation, Wiley & Sons, (1974). ISBN 0-471-24980-7
  45. ^ Administration for Children and Families (2010) The Program Manager's Guide to Evaluation. Chapter 2: What is program evaluation?.
  46. ^ Shackman, Gene (February 11, 2018). "What Is Program Evaluation: A Beginner's Guide". The Global Social Change Research Project. SSRN 3060080. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  47. ^ Peterson's (Firm : 2006– ). (2007). Peterson's graduate programs in the humanities, arts, & social sciences, 2007. Lawrenceville, New Jersey: Peterson's.
  48. ^ a b Overland, Indra; Sovacool, Benjamin K. (April 1, 2020). "The misallocation of climate research funding". Energy Research & Social Science. 62: 101349. doi:10.1016/j.erss.2019.101349. ISSN 2214-6296.

  • Michie, Jonathan, ed. Reader's Guide to the Social Sciences (2 vol. 2001) 1970 pages annotating the major topics in the late 20th century in all the social sciences.

20th and 21st centuries sources

  • Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes (2001). International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  • Byrne, D.S. (1998). Complexity theory and the social sciences: an introduction. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-16296-3
  • Kuper, A., and Kuper, J. (1985). The Social Science Encyclopedia. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. (ed., a limited preview of the 1996 version is available)
  • Lave, C.A., and March, J.G. (1993). An introduction to models in the social sciences. Lanham, Md: University Press of America.
  • Perry, John and Erna Perry. Contemporary Society: An Introduction to Social Science (12th Edition, 2008), college textbook
  • Potter, D. (1988). Society and the social sciences: An introduction. London: Routledge [u.a.].
  • David L. Sills and Robert K. Merton (1968). International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences.
  • Seligman, Edwin R.A. and Alvin Johnson (1934). Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. (13 vol.)
  • Ward, L.F. (1924). Dynamic sociology, or applied social science: As based upon statical sociology and the less complex sciences. New York: D. Appleton.
  • Leavitt, F.M., and Brown, E. (1920). Elementary social science. New York: Macmillan.
  • Bogardus, E.S. (1913). Introduction to the social sciences: A textbook outline. Los Angeles: Ralston Press.
  • Small, A.W. (1910). The meaning of social science. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

19th century sources

  • Andrews, S.P. (1888). The science of society. Boston, Mass: Sarah E. Holmes.
  • Denslow, V.B. (1882). Modern thinkers principally upon social science: What they think, and why. Chicago: Belford, Clarke & Co.
  • Harris, William Torrey (1879). Method of Study in Social Science: A Lecture Delivered Before the St. Louis Social Science Association, March 4, 1879. St. Louis: G.I. Jones and Co, 1879.
  • Hamilton, R.S. (1873). Present status of social science. A review, historical and critical, of the progress of thought in social philosophy. New York: H.L. Hinton.
  • Carey, H.C. (1867). Principles of social science. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co. [etc.]. Volume I, Volume II, Volume III.
  • Calvert, G.H. (1856). Introduction to social science: A discourse in three parts. New York: Redfield.

General sources

  • Backhouse, Roger E., and Philippe Fontaine, eds. A historiography of the modern social sciences (Cambridge University Press, 2014).
  • Backhouse, Roger E.; Fontaine, Philippe, eds. (2010). The History of the Social Sciences Since 1945. Cambridge University Press.; covers the conceptual, institutional, and wider histories of economics, political science, sociology, social anthropology, psychology, and human geography.
  • Delanty, G. (1997). Social science: Beyond constructivism and realism. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press.
  • Hargittai, E. (2009). Research Confidential: Solutions to Problems Most Social Scientists Pretend They Never Have. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-02653-1.ISBN 978-0-472-05026-0, 978-0-472-07026-8
  • Hunt, E.F.; Colander, D.C. (2008). Social science: An introduction to the study of society. Boston: Peason/Allyn and Bacon. ISBN 978-0-205-52406-8.
  • Carey, H.C.; McKean, K. (1883). Manual of social science; Being a condensation of the Principles of social science. Philadelphia: Baird.
  • Galavotti, M.C. (2003). Observation and experiment in the natural and social sciences. Boston studies in the philosophy of science. 232. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic. ISBN 978-1-4020-1251-8.
  • Gorton, W.A. (2006). Karl Popper and the social sciences. SUNY series in the philosophy of the social sciences. Albany: State University of New York Press.
  • Harris, F.R. (1973). Social science and national policy. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books. ISBN 978-1-4128-3445-2. distributed by Dutton
  • Krimerman, L.I. (1969). The nature and scope of social science: A critical anthology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
  • Rule, J.B. (1997). Theory and progress in social science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Shionoya, Y. (1997). Schumpeter and the idea of social science: A metatheoretical study. Historical perspectives on modern economics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Singleton, Royce, A.; Straits, Bruce C. (1988). Approaches to Social Research. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-514794-0. Archived from the original on March 3, 2007.
  • Thomas, D. (1979). Naturalism and social science: a post-empiricist philosophy of social science. CUP Archive. ISBN 978-0-521-29660-1.
  • Trigg, R. (2001). Understanding social science: A philosophical introduction to the social sciences. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishers.
  • Weber, M. (1906) [1904]. The Relations of the Rural Community to Other Branches of Social Science, Congress of Arts and Science: Universal Exposition. St. Louis: Houghton, Mifflin and Company.
  • Creswell, John W., author. Educational research : planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research. ISBN 1-299-95719-6. OCLC 859836343.CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Academic resources

  • The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, ISSN 1552-3349 (electronic) ISSN 0002-7162 (paper), SAGE Publications
  • Efferson, C. and Richerson, P.J.(In press). A prolegomenon to nonlinear empiricism in the human behavioral sciences. Philosophy and Biology. Full text

Opponents and critics

  • George H. Smith (2014). Intellectuals and Libertarianism: Thomas Sowell and Robert Nisbet
  • Phil Hutchinson, Rupert Read and Wes Sharrock (2008). There's No Such Thing as a Social Science. ISBN 978-0-7546-4776-8
  • Sabia, D.R., and Wallulis, J. (1983). Changing social science: Critical theory and other critical perspectives. Albany: State University of New York Press.

  • Institute for Comparative Research in Human and Social Sciences (ICR) (JAPAN)
  • Centre for Social Work Research
  • Family Therapy and Systemic Research Centre
  • International Conference on Social Sciences
  • International Social Science Council
  • Introduction to Hutchinson et al., There's No Such Thing as a Social Science
  • Intute: Social Sciences (UK)
  • Social Science Research Society
  • Social Science Virtual Library
  • Social Science Virtual Library: Canaktanweb (Turkish)
  • Social Sciences And Humanities
  • UC Berkeley Experimental Social Science Laboratory
  • The Dialectic of Social Science by Paul A. Baran
  • American Academy Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences