Social science

Many people associate psychology with clinical psychology,^[45] 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.^[46]

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:

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Sociology is the systematic study of society, individuals' relationship to their societies, the consequences of difference, and other aspects of human social action.^[47] 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.^{[citation needed]}

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) coined the term sociology to describe a way to apply natural science principles and techniques to the social world in 1838.

In the early 1970s, women sociologists began to question sociological paradigms and the invisibility of women in sociological studies, analysis, and courses.[53] In 1969, feminist sociologists challenged the discipline's androcentrism at the American Sociological Association's annual conference.^[54] 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.^{[citation needed]}

New sociological sub-fields continue to appear — such as

Additional applied or interdisciplinary fields related to the social sciences or are applied 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.^[56]
• Area studies are interdisciplinary fields of research and scholarship pertaining to particular geographical, national/federal, or cultural regions.^[57]
• Behavioural science is a term that encompasses all the disciplines that explore the activities of and interactions among organisms in the natural world.^[58]
• Computational social science is an umbrella field encompassing computational approaches within the social sciences.^[59]
• Demography is the statistical study of all human populations.^[60]
• multidisciplinary branch of social science that addresses issues of concern to developing countries.^[61]
• transdisciplinary study of interrelations between humans and the natural environment.^[62]
• Environmental studies integrate social, humanistic, and natural science perspectives on the relation between humans and the natural environment.^[63]
• sexuality.^[64]
• Information science is an interdisciplinary science primarily concerned with the collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information.^[65]
• 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).^[66]
• Legal management is a social sciences discipline that is designed for students interested in the study of state and legal elements.^[67]
• 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.^[68]
• 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.^[69]
• 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.^[70]
• Political economy is the study of production, buying and selling, and their relations with law, custom, and government.^[71]
• 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,^[72] 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.^[73]

Methodology

Social research

The origin of the survey can be traced back at least as early as the

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

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,^[78] 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.^[79]

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, scientific socialism, 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 into the 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.

Recursivity

Authors use the concept of recursivity to foreground the situation in which social scientists find themselves when producing knowledge about the world they are always already part of.^[80][81] According to Audrey Alejandro, “as social scientists, the recursivity of our condition deals with the fact that we are both subjects (as discourses are the medium through which we analyse) and objects of the academic discourses we produce (as we are social agents belonging to the world we analyse).”^[82] From this basis, she identifies in recursivity a fundamental challenge in the production of emancipatory knowledge which calls for the exercise of reflexive efforts:

we are socialised into discourses and dispositions produced by the socio-political order we aim to challenge, a socio-political order that we may, therefore, reproduce unconsciously while aiming to do the contrary. The recursivity of our situation as scholars – and, more precisely, the fact that the dispositional tools we use to produce knowledge about the world are themselves produced by this world – both evinces the vital necessity of implementing reflexivity in practice and poses the main challenge in doing so.^[83]

Education and degrees

Most universities offer degrees in social science fields.^[84] 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

Social sciences receive less funding than 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 the impact of and adaptation to climate change.^[85] 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.^[85]

Nevertheless, funding and attention paid to the social sciences varies across countries. For instance, the development of a social scientific community can become a priority entangled with national politics.^[86] In the case of Brazil, for example, the institutionalisation of social sciences took place in a political context where the state struggled to assert its territorial power, and the social scientific field was expected to produce investigation but also political inputs towards the construction of a new nation.^[87][88] This need was accentuated after the 1932 revolution, in the wake of which the USP was founded and became the biggest university in South America. Subsequently, these developments led to the deployment of university programs and the institution of national associations in anthropology, sociology and political science.^[86]

People associated with the social sciences

See also

Notes