Sociology & Society

The study of human societies is an important tool for the improvement of living conditions. It analyzes the innumerable factors that are the makeup of human behavior and that can cause social injustice, stratification, and societal disorder in the form of crime, deviance, and revolution. It helps to find the best possible solutions to issues such as economic inequality, race relations, and gender discrimination. The discipline of sociology has grown by leaps and bounds in the last century with the contribution of scholars from different schools of thought.

Browse Subcategories

Sociologists & Other Social Scientists

Sociology & Society Encyclopedia Articles

196-ARA

ARA-BIG

BLA-CAS

CAT-COW

COY-EAS

EAS-FRI

FRO-HAD

HAD-INS

INS-LAB

LAB-MAY

MAY-NAT

NAT-PAN

PAR-RAD

RAD-SCI

SCI-STA

STA-VAN

VAN-ḌOM

Featured Articles

Amnesty International demonstration in Warsaw

interest group

Interest group, any association of individuals or organizations, usually formally organized, that, on the basis of one or more shared concerns, attempts to influence public policy in its favour. All interest...

sociology

Sociology, a social science that studies human societies, their interactions, and the processes that preserve and change them. It does this by examining the dynamics of constituent parts of societies such...

kinship

Kinship, system of social organization based on real or putative family ties. The modern study of kinship can be traced back to mid-19th-century interests in comparative legal institutions and philology....

criminology

Criminology, scientific study of the nonlegal aspects of crime and delinquency, including its causes, correction, and prevention, from the viewpoints of such diverse disciplines as anthropology, biology,...

police brutality in the United States

Police brutality in the United States, the unwarranted or excessive and often illegal use of force against civilians by U.S. police officers. Forms of police brutality have ranged from assault and battery...

Margaret Mead conducting fieldwork in Bali

anthropology

Anthropology, “the science of humanity,” which studies human beings in aspects ranging from the biology and evolutionary history of Homo sapiens to the features of society and culture that decisively distinguish...

Nancy Hanks

Nancy Hanks American public official whose position as chair of the National Endowment for the Arts allowed her to dramatically increase funding for and programs in the arts. Hanks graduated from Duke...

linguistics

Linguistics, the scientific study of language. The word was first used in the middle of the 19th century to emphasize the difference between a newer approach to the study of language that was then developing...

Conrad Taeuber and Irene Barnes Taeuber

Conrad Taeuber and Irene Barnes Taeuber American demographers, statisticians, and social scientists whose scholarly work helped found the science of demography and made them authorities on population movements...

social service

Social service, any of numerous publicly or privately provided services intended to aid disadvantaged, distressed, or vulnerable persons or groups. The term social service also denotes the profession engaged...

governance

Governance, patterns of rule or practices of governing. The study of governance generally approaches power as distinct from or exceeding the centralized authority of the modern state. The term governance...

cultural globalization

Cultural globalization, phenomenon by which the experience of everyday life, as influenced by the diffusion of commodities and ideas, reflects a standardization of cultural expressions around the world....

Medicare and Medicaid

Medicare and Medicaid, two U.S. government programs that guarantee health insurance for the elderly and the poor, respectively. They were formally enacted in 1965 as amendments (Titles XVIII and XIX, respectively)...

archaeology

Archaeology, the scientific study of the material remains of past human life and activities. These include human artifacts from the very earliest stone tools to the man-made objects that are buried or...

collective action problem

Collective action problem, problem, inherent to collective action, that is posed by disincentives that tend to discourage joint action by individuals in the pursuit of a common goal. Collective action...

cultural anthropology

Cultural anthropology, a major division of anthropology that deals with the study of culture in all of its aspects and that uses the methods, concepts, and data of archaeology, ethnography and ethnology,...