Concepts

 All of Science stems from Philosophy, the love of knowledge. Philo meaning love; Sophia
meaning knowledge
 Why? We are thinking beings!
 Science is the comprehensive, systematic body of knowledge
 "Truth is relative."
 2 Branches of Science
 Physical Science
 Physical features of nature
 Social Science
 Social features of human man; interactions, and change

Branches of Social Science

History
 Events of the past and their significance today
 Set of clues that guide us to maximize our time
 "History does not repeat itself." The one lesson we've learned in history is that we have not
learned any of its lessons.
 To look for similarities and predict the outcome
Economics
 Way which people produce, exchange goods and services
 Oikonomiya - Household management
 Deals with the organization of product and services to satisfy needs and wants;
 Organization of labor and resources
 Resources available influences human behaviors.
 Needs/Wants -> Satisfy -> Resources -> Convert -> Products/Services -> Allocate/Distribute
-> Satisfy..
 Poverty
 Absolute Poverty
 Includes the lack of biological necessities, such as food, water, clothing, housing, and
sanitation.
 Same in all countries
 Relative Poverty
 Refers to a poverty line, and is a definition of the amount of income a person needs to
satisfy basic needs.
 More to do with income inequality.
 Poverty line
 Set of standards
 Poverty lines are used to set a level below which people are considered to be in
extreme poverty to protect interest and are driven by political profit.
 Poverty results from several political, social and economic processes that interact in ways
to make people’s living conditions worse and worse. Not as simple as money and no
money
 Our responsibility as the educated to give opportunities to the less fortunate.
Anthropology
 Pre-history; Past culture; Pre-industrial societies that continue today; Origin of humans
 Explains why we differ in physical features (Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid)
 Homo sapiens larger brain capacity eventually cause the existence of the Homo erectus to
cease
 Natural selection, Adaptation, Migration
 Evolution - Change in the physical attributes due to adaptation.
Psychology
 Human mind; Personality; Individual behavior
 Sigmund Freud
 Experiences affect human mind
 Focuses on social actions and on interrelations of personality, values, and mind with social
structure and culture.
Sociology
 19th Century
 Scientific study of human behavior and human groups.
 Influence of society on human attitude; interactions
Political Science
 International relations, workings of government, exercise of power and authority

Promise of Sociology
 Sociological Imagination
 Critical way of thinking the associates personal life to the impersonal issue that
encompass society.
 Objective view
 Personal problems have social roots. Our seemingly private concerns are greatly
influenced by social and historical conditions.
 Example: Beauty. We think about physical attraction as a matter of preference, but they
aren't always and not completely. What someone from the west may consider is beautiful
may be thought as the opposite by someone from the east because their societies are
different. Or Rape.
 Connection our personal matter to public issues.
 Improving individual lives requires social solution.
 When we become self-conscious of public matters, we understand our place in the world.

Invitation to Sociology
 We must look beyond what is merely observable because the "facts" that we face
everyday are only the tip of the iceberg and that there more levels of reality behind those
facts that needs to be investigated,
 Example: Love is not just a feeling. But a result of conditions or subconscious standards
being satisfied by a person.

Pioneers of Sociology
Auguste Comte
 Coined the term sociology
 Pioneered the concept of Positivism (fact gained from empirical)
 Law of 3 stages
 Fictitious Or Religious -
 Metaphysics or abstract - Philosophical reason
 Scientifc/ Positivism - Empirical investigation
 Social physics - Top hierarchy of science; Social physics is a field of science which uses
mathematical tools inspired by physics to understand the behavior of human crowds. In a
modern commercial use, it can also refer to the analysis of social phenomena with big data.
 Two branches: social statics and social dynamics
 Social statics - Forces that bond to form society
 Social dynamics - Forces that drive change
 Uses physics to explain human behavior

Herbert Spencer
 Social Darwinism
 Applied concept of the evolution of species to society
 Rich and poor, pollution, discrimination = a result of survival of the fittest

Emile Durkheim
 Father of Sociology
 Applied Positivism, and quantitative data/ comprehensively to his research on suicide
 Anomie - Normlessness during times of prosperity and hardship
 The Division of Labor and Society - Reason behind system is narrow specialization
 Elementary of Religion - Social Fact, Social Current (Societal bandwagon) unless one uses
social imagination. We do not need to follow trends; not put on Earth to satisfy others
 Kinds of suicide differ in conditions
 Egoistic - alienation
 Altruistic
 Anomic
 Fatalistic
 Social facts are things because they are outside us, they are not a product or creation of the
present generation; they are a given, pre-existing condition. These characteristics of social
facts allow us to identify and study them. Examples of social facts: institutions, statuses,
roles, laws, beliefs, population distribution, urbanization, etc. Social facts include social
institutions, social activities and the substratum of society or social morphology

Max Weber
 Verstehen - German word for insight
 Ideal type - When the concepts in sociology is general, distinctive features will be left
behind. It is the ideal type notion that escapes this dilemma. It stresses certain elements
common to most cases of a given phenomenon.

Karl Marx
 Used Friedrich Engels dialectics to explain society. According to him, the course of events of
society is in a continual process of becoming and ceasing to be. He applied Eagles' concept
of thesis-antithesis- synthesis in sociology of society
 Society is in continual process of becoming and ceasing to be

Role of Language
 Language
 Major element of culture that underlie cultural variations
 Observers from an entirely different culture could gauge the importance of things in our
lives by recognizing the prominence of such terms in our language
 Abstract system of word meaning and symbols. Includes speech, written characters,
numeral, symbols, gesture
 Foundation of culture
 Serves to shape reality of a culture
 Sapir-Whorf hypothesis= Role of language in shaping the interpretation of reality. Lang.
Precedes thought.
 Language is not given but culturally determined, helps us focus on certain
phenomena. (Ex. Rice in PH)
 Language holds a culture’s most important thoughts and values – so when it dies so will
culture.
 Not a basis for superiority
 Animals do not have a language

Norms
 Language can influence norms (Recall proverbs from Oral Comm.)
 Established standards of behavior maintained by society.
 Widely shared and understood
 Types of Norms
 Formal
 Generally have been written down, specify strict punishments
 Formalized norms are laws
 Ex. Requirement for college, Rules for card game, school rules, jobs
 Informal
 Generally understood and not precisely recorded. No sanction.
 Ex. Clothes
Classification of Informal:
 Mores – Deemed highly necessary to the welfare of society
 Goes against principles and values, morality
 Ex. Murder, treason, child abuse, Abortion, prostitution, child labor, bullying,
rape
 Can be institutionalized into formal norms
 Folkways – Governs everyday behavior
 Ex. Elevator etiquette, table manners
 Norms are violated because one norm conflicts with anothe

Sanctions
 Penalties or reward for conduct concerning a social norm.
 Most cherished values will be most heavily sanctioned; matters regarded as less critical will
carry light informal sanctions.
Values
 Cultural values collective conceptions of what is considered good or bad.
 Serve as a criteria for evaluating the actions of others
Process of cultural change
 Innovation – Process of introducing a new idea.
 Two forms:
 Discovery – Making known or sharing the existence of an aspect of reality
 Invention – Existing cultural items are combined to form something that did not exist
before
 Diffusion – Process of which cultural item spread from a group to another group or
society.
 Melding of cultures
 Filipino culture is alive through gay lingo, jejemon
 Culture is learned, shared, dynamic, cumulative, divers