sociology

What is Sociology?



Well friends, today we are going to concentrate on what is sociology? Basically I follow two books; one Alex Inkeles and second Gisbert. The title of Alex Inkeles book is this; What is sociology? and Gisbert books title is; Sociology. Alex Inkeles asks three questions; one what did the founding fathers do? Those peoples who actually develops the subject of sociology what did they do? What do they think about developing a new subject? What are their new expectations? What kind of problems they took up for investigation? What was their methodology and to answer that questions we also has to identify, who are the founding fathers? Another approach to follow is empirical approach, means what do those people, what do sociologies, those who called sociologies do? Like I am a sociologist, I have the positions for professor of sociology. There are sociology placed in university departments, professional institutions, medical colleges, agricultural colleges, engineering colleges, management colleges, they are sociologists placed under different ministries or government of India.



There are sociologies in international organizations, in NGO’s and research NGO’s, ex NGO’s and voluntary development organizations, what will they do? What kind of problems they take up? How they approach their problems? What methodology do they follow? What are the subjects of study, this can be another way of knowing, what is sociology? The difference between this question and this question is, that this question is about the dreams, visions, methodologies of those develops the subject of sociology and this question is about those, contemporary sociologists, that those who are working for sociologies of somewhere, what are they doing? So, from knowing what are these peoples doing are called sociologists, we can know what is sociology about.



And third way of knowing what is sociology is what does the reason suggest? Logic, that it broadly divides the subject of human behavior, we all know the sociology is about human behavior, that we also know that they are many other disciplines like psychology, philosophy, anthropology, economics, political science, ethics they also deal with human behavior. So, what does the reason suggests? Means if all these disciplines are about human behavior, then what is the difference between sociology and all these disciplines, logic, reason? What does the reason suggest that these are the three ways of knowing, what is the subject matter of sociology? Regarding this question, what did the founding fathers do? Who are the founding fathers? There is not one person or there are large number of persons who have been contributed to development any discipline including sociology. If I ask you are all the students of engineering, if I ask you who the founding father of engineering is? You will not be able to answer and pin point 30 years person P is the responsible for the development of engineering.