Social Science

What is Social Science?

•         Social Science is not a discipline to itself but is composed of numerous sub-disciplines. 

•         A running definition is the scientific study of the social world. We study all things social. 

Definition of Social Science:

•         Any discipline or branch of science that deals with the socio-cultural aspects of human behavior.

•         A discipline that involves the systematic study of society and individuals, or social phenomena.

Background of Social Science: The idea that human society could be studied "scientifically" gained prominence throughout the Western world during the nineteenth century largely as a result of the triumphs of the sciences of nature, especially physics and biology.

What are the Social Sciences?

·      Economics

·      Anthropology 

·      Political Science

·      Psychology

·      History

·      Sociology

Economics:

•         Economics is a social science that seeks to analyze and describe the production, distribution, and consumption of wealth.

•          The word "economics" is from the Greek οἶκος [oikos], "family, household, estate," and νόμος [nomos], "custom, law," and hence means "household management" or "management of the state.

Branches of Economics:

•         Economics has two broad branches: Microeconomics, where the unit of analysis is the individual agent, such as a household, firm and Macroeconomics, where the unit of analysis is an economy as a whole.

Anthropology:

•         Anthropos means human and logia is study so that anthropology is the study of humans.

•         More specifically, it is the study of human differences, cultural and biological, in the context of human nature. Anthropologists identify and compare behavior of a particular group against the full range of human behavior.

Branches of Anthropology:

•         Anthropology may be the only social science discipline to include the natural or biological sciences while retaining many of the characteristics of the humanistic discipline.

•         Physical anthropology has most of the hallmarks of a natural science.

•         Cultural anthropology, telling a story, has many of the hallmarks of history. As the science of man, dealing with past and present behavior.

•         Anthropology may be the most holistic of the social science disciplines.

Political Science:

•         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 behavior.

•         Political science studies power, government and politics. The study of order, rulers, and ruling has a long tradition with students as diverse as Aristotle and Machiavelli. For most of the history of human kind, political events were seen as unique.

Psychology:

•         The word psychology comes from the ancient Greek ψυχή, psyche ("soul", "mind") and logy, study).

•         Psychology is an academic and applied field involving the study of behavior 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.

•         Psychology differs from anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology in seeking to capture explanatory generalizations about the mental function and overt behavior of individuals, while the other disciplines rely more heavily on group, field studies and historical methods for extracting descriptive generalizations

History:

•         A discipline which studies all the events of the past with explanation.

•         The total accumulation of past events, esp. relating to human affairs or to the accumulation of developments connected with a particular nation, person, things, etc.

Relations of Sociology with other Social Sciences:

Sociology shares deep ties with a wide array of other disciplines that also deal with the study of society. The fields of economics, psychology, and anthropology have influenced and have been influenced by sociology and these fields share a great amount of history and common research interests.

•         Psychology - The study of the mind and its processes.  Psychologists study individual behavior within a social context. 

            Psychology and sociology link on that they deal with the behavior of people. Psychology deals with the behavior of people and their mental processes just like sociology which also seeks to understand how people's behavior affects society.

•         Economics - The study of human economic systems and commercial exchange behavior.  Economist also study social problems such as poverty, unemployment, or environmental degradation.

            Economic and sociology they deal with the economical condition of our people. Economic is the science of how individuals and societies deal with the fact that wants are greater than the limited resources available to satisfy those wants.

•         Anthropology - The study of human species concerned with culture. (Cultural Anthropology)  Anthropology often involves comparing nonwestern cultures.  More recently, anthropology has began to study western cultural behaviors such as the mass media, mainstream religions, economic units, divorce, and commercial agriculture.  

            Anthropology and sociology also deal with society but the only difference is that social anthropology mainly considers small states and their culture but their area of study is basically the same.

•         Political Science - The study of political systems.  Political scientists are concerned with power in society along with the role of influence on decision making.  Some study comparative political systems and the international system. 

            Sociology and political science are also related in the sense that they both concern the welfare of people in a society. Political science basically deals with the distribution of power and the exercise power, democracy, dictatorship, communism, how people vote etc.

•         History - Studies social relations in the past.  Both history and sociology systematically look at how current society evolved.

            History is another social science which is related to sociology. History primarily deals with past events and how they affected society eg. how the colonization of Africa underdeveloped Africa. Sociology on the other end will be concerned with how people interacted, how culture was affected etc during the colonization and the present