Social science

Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships
among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the
original "science of society", established in the 18th century. In addition to sociology, it now encompasses a
wide array of academic disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, economics, geography, linguistics,
management, communication studies, psychology, culturology and political science.[1]

Positivist social scientists use methods resembling those used in the natural sciences as tools for
understanding societies, and so define science in its stricter modern sense. Interpretivist or speculative social
scientists, by contrast, may use social critique or symbolic interpretation rather than constructing empirically
falsifiable theories, and thus treat science in its broader sense.[2] In modern academic practice, researchers
are often eclectic, using multiple methodologies (for instance, by combining both quantitative and
qualitative research).[3] The term social research has also acquired a degree of autonomy as practitioners
from various disciplines share similar goals and methods.[4]

History
The history of the social sciences began in the Age of Enlightenment
after 1650,[5] which saw a revolution within natural philosophy,
changing the basic framework by which individuals understood what
was scientific. Social sciences came forth from the moral philosophy of
the time and were influenced by the Age of Revolutions, such as the
Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution.[6] The social
sciences developed from the sciences (experimental and applied), or
the systematic knowledge-bases or prescriptive practices, relating to the
Early censuses and surveys
social improvement of a group of interacting entities.[7][8]
provided demographic data.

The beginnings of the social sciences in the 18th century are reflected
in the grand encyclopedia of Diderot, with articles from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and other pioneers. The
growth of the social sciences is also reflected in other specialized encyclopedias. The term "social science"
was coined in French by Mirabeau in 1767, before becoming a distinct conceptual field in the nineteenth
century.[9] Social science was influenced by positivism,[6] focusing on knowledge based on actual positive
sense experience and avoiding the negative; metaphysical speculation was avoided. Auguste Comte used
the term science sociale to describe the field, taken from the ideas of Charles Fourier; Comte also referred to
the field as social physics.[6][10]

Following this period, five paths of development sprang forth in the social sciences, influenced by Comte in
other fields.[6] One route that was taken was the rise of social research. Large statistical surveys were
undertaken in various parts of the United States and Europe. Another route undertaken was initiated by
Émile Durkheim, studying "social facts", and Vilfredo Pareto, opening metatheoretical ideas and individual
theories. A third means developed, arising from the methodological dichotomy present, in which social
phenomena were identified with and understood; this was championed by figures such as Max Weber.[11]
The fourth route taken, based in economics, was developed and furthered economic knowledge as a hard
science. The last path was the correlation of knowledge and social values; the antipositivism and verstehen
sociology of Max Weber firmly demanded this distinction. In this route, theory (description) and
prescription were non-overlapping formal discussions of a subject.[12][13]

The foundation of social sciences in the West implies conditioned relationships between progressive and
traditional spheres of knowledge. In some contexts, such as the Italian one, sociology slowly affirms itself
and experiences the difficulty of affirming a strategic knowledge beyond philosophy and theology.[14]

Around the start of the 20th century, Enlightenment philosophy was challenged in various quarters. After
the use of classical theories since the end of the scientific revolution, various fields substituted mathematics
studies for experimental studies and examining equations to build a theoretical structure. The development
of social science subfields became very quantitative in methodology. The interdisciplinary and cross-
disciplinary nature of scientific inquiry into human behaviour, social and environmental factors affecting it,
made many of the natural sciences interested in some aspects of social science methodology.[15] Examples
of boundary blurring include emerging disciplines like social research of medicine, sociobiology,
neuropsychology, bioeconomics and the history and sociology of science. Increasingly, quantitative
research and qualitative methods are being integrated in the study of human action and its implications and
consequences. In the first half of the 20th century, statistics became a free-standing discipline of applied
mathematics.[16] Statistical methods were used confidently.

In the contemporary period, Karl Popper and Talcott Parsons influenced the furtherance of the social
sciences.[6] Researchers continue to search for a unified consensus on what methodology might have the
power and refinement to connect a proposed "grand theory" with the various midrange theories that, with
considerable success, continue to provide usable frameworks for massive, growing data banks; for more,
see consilience. The social sciences will for the foreseeable future be composed of different zones in the
research of, and sometimes distinct in approach toward, the field.[6]

The term "social science" may refer either to the specific sciences of society established by thinkers such as
Comte, Durkheim, Marx, and Weber, or more generally to all disciplines outside of "noble science" and
arts. By the late 19th century, the academic social sciences were constituted of five fields: jurisprudence and
amendment of the law, education, health, economy and trade, and art.[7]

Around the start of the 21st century, the expanding domain of economics in the social sciences has been
described as economic imperialism.[17]

A distinction is usually drawn between the social sciences and the humanities. Classicist Allan Bloom writes
in The Closing of the American Mind (1987):

Social science and humanities have a mutual contempt for one another, the former looking down
on the latter as unscientific, the latter regarding the former as philistine. […] The difference comes
down to the fact that social science really wants to be predictive, meaning that man is predictable,
while the humanities say that he is not.[18]

Branches
The social science disciplines are branches of knowledge taught and researched at the college or university
level. Social science disciplines are defined and recognized by the academic journals in which research is
published, and the learned social science societies and academic departments or faculties to which their
practitioners belong. Social science fields of study usually have several sub-disciplines or branches, and the
distinguishing lines between these are often both arbitrary and ambiguous.

The following are problem areas, applied social sciences and discipline branches within the social
sciences.[6]

Anthropology
Archaeology
Area studies
Behavioural science
Business studies
Cognitive science
Communication studies
Criminology
Cultural studies
Culturology
Demography
Development studies
Economics
Education
Environmental science
Environmental studies
Folklore studies
Ethics
Gender studies
Geography
Global studies
History
Industrial relations
International relations
Journalism
Law
Library science
Linguistics
Management
Management science
Marketing
Media studies
Military science
Philosophy
Political science
Public administration
Public policy
 Public relations
Psychology
Religious studies
Social work
Sociology
Sustainable development
Sustainability studies
Theology

Anthropology
Anthropology is the holistic "science of man", a science of the totality of human existence. The discipline
deals with the integration of different aspects of the social sciences, humanities, and human biology. In the
twentieth century, academic disciplines have often been institutionally divided into three broad domains.
Firstly, the natural sciences seek to derive general laws through reproducible and verifiable experiments.
Secondly, the humanities generally study local traditions, through their history, literature, music, and arts,
with an emphasis on understanding particular individuals, events, or eras. Finally, the social sciences have
generally attempted to develop scientific methods to understand social phenomena in a generalizable way,
though usually with methods distinct from those of the natural sciences.

The anthropological social sciences often develop nuanced descriptions rather than the general laws derived
in physics or chemistry, or they may explain individual cases through more general principles, as in many
fields of psychology. Anthropology (like some fields of history) does not easily fit into one of these
categories, and different branches of anthropology draw on one or more of these domains.[19] Within the
United States, anthropology is divided into four sub-fields: archaeology, physical or biological
anthropology, anthropological linguistics, and cultural anthropology. It is an area that is offered at most
undergraduate institutions. The word anthropos (ἄνθρωπος) in Ancient Greek means "human being" or
"person". Eric Wolf described sociocultural anthropology as "the most scientific of the humanities, and the
most humanistic of the sciences".

The goal of anthropology is to provide a holistic account of humans and human nature. This means that,
though anthropologists generally specialize in only one sub-field, they always keep in mind the biological,
linguistic, historic and cultural aspects of any problem. Since anthropology arose as a science in Western
societies that were complex and industrial, a major trend within anthropology has been a methodological
drive to study peoples in societies with more simple social organization, sometimes called "primitive" in
anthropological literature, but without any connotation of "inferior".[20] Today, anthropologists use terms
such as "less complex" societies or refer to specific modes of subsistence or production, such as
"pastoralist" or "forager" or "horticulturalist" to refer to humans living in non-industrial, non-Western
cultures, such people or folk (ethnos) remaining of great interest within anthropology.

The quest for holism leads most anthropologists to study a people in detail, using biogenetic, archaeological,
and linguistic data alongside direct observation of contemporary customs.[21] In the 1990s and 2000s, calls
for clarification of what constitutes a culture, of how an observer knows where his or her own culture ends
and another begins, and other crucial topics in writing anthropology were heard. It is possible to view all
human cultures as part of one large, evolving global culture. These dynamic relationships, between what
can be observed on the ground, as opposed to what can be observed by compiling many local observations
remain fundamental in any kind of anthropology, whether cultural, biological, linguistic or
archaeological.[22]

Communication studies
Communication studies deals with processes of human communication, commonly defined as the sharing of
symbols to create meaning. The discipline encompasses a range of topics, from face-to-face conversation to
mass media outlets such as television broadcasting. Communication studies also examine how messages are
interpreted through the political, cultural, economic, and social dimensions of their contexts.
Communication is institutionalized under many different names at different universities, including
communication, communication studies, speech communication, rhetorical studies, communication
science, media studies, communication arts, mass communication, media ecology, and communication and
media science.

Communication studies integrate aspects of both social sciences and the humanities. As a social science, the
discipline often overlaps with sociology, psychology, anthropology, biology, political science, economics,
and public policy, among others. From a humanities perspective, communication is concerned with rhetoric
and persuasion (traditional graduate programs in communication studies trace their history to the
rhetoricians of Ancient Greece). The field applies to outside disciplines as well, including engineering,
architecture, mathematics, and information science.

Economics
Economics is a social science that seeks to analyze and describe the production, distribution, and
consumption of wealth.[23] The word "economics" is from the Ancient Greek οἶκος (oikos, "family,
household, estate") and νόμος (nomos, "custom, law"), and hence means "household management" or
"management of the state". An economist is a person using economic concepts and data in the course of
employment, or someone who has earned a degree in the subject. The classic brief definition of economics,
set out by Lionel Robbins in 1932, is "the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between
ends and scarce means which have alternative uses". Without scarcity and alternative uses, there is no
economic problem. Briefer yet is "the study of how people seek to satisfy needs and wants" and "the study
of the financial aspects of human behavior".

Economics has two broad branches: microeconomics, where the

unit of analysis is the individual agent, such as a household or firm,
and macroeconomics, where the unit of analysis is an economy as a
whole. Another division of the subject distinguishes positive
economics, which seeks to predict and explain economic
phenomena, from normative economics, which orders choices and
actions by some criterion; such orderings necessarily involve
subjective value judgments. Since the early part of the 20th century, Buyers bargain for good prices while
sellers put forth their best front in
economics has focused largely on measurable quantities, employing
Chichicastenango Market,
both theoretical models and empirical analysis. Quantitative models,
Guatemala.
however, can be traced as far back as the physiocratic school.
Economic reasoning has been increasingly applied in recent decades to other social situations such as
politics, law, psychology, history, religion, marriage and family life, and other social interactions.

The expanding domain of economics in the social sciences has been described as economic
imperialism.[17][24]

Education
Education encompasses teaching and learning specific skills, and
also something less tangible but more profound: the imparting of
knowledge, positive judgement and well-developed wisdom.
Education has as one of its fundamental aspects the imparting of
culture from generation to generation (see socialization). To educate
means 'to draw out', from the Latin educare, or to facilitate the
realization of an individual's potential and talents. It is an
application of pedagogy, a body of theoretical and applied research
relating to teaching and learning and draws on many disciplines
such as psychology, philosophy, computer science, linguistics, A depiction of world's oldest
university, the University of Bologna,
neuroscience, sociology and anthropology.[25]
in Italy

Geography
Geography as a discipline can be split broadly into two main sub
fields: human geography and physical geography. The former
focuses largely on the built environment and how space is created,
viewed and managed by humans as well as the influence humans
have on the space they occupy. This may involve cultural
geography, transportation, health, military operations, and cities.
Map of the Earth
The latter examines the natural environment and how the climate,
vegetation and life, soil, oceans, water and landforms are produced
and interact (is also commonly regarded as an Earth Science).[26] Physical geography examines phenomena
related to the measurement of earth. As a result of the two subfields using different approaches a third field
has emerged, which is environmental geography. Environmental geography combines physical and human
geography and looks at the interactions between the environment and humans.[27] Other branches of
geography include social geography, regional geography, and geomatics.

Geographers attempt to understand the Earth in terms of physical and spatial relationships. The first
geographers focused on the science of mapmaking and finding ways to precisely project the surface of the
earth. In this sense, geography bridges some gaps between the natural sciences and social sciences.
Historical geography is often taught in a college in a unified Department of Geography.
Modern geography is an all-encompassing discipline, closely related to Geographic Information Science,
that seeks to understand humanity and its natural environment. The fields of urban planning, regional
science, and planetology are closely related to geography. Practitioners of geography use many technologies
and methods to collect data such as Geographic Information Systems, remote sensing, aerial photography,
statistics, and global positioning systems.

History
History is the continuous, systematic narrative and research into past human events as interpreted through
historiographical paradigms or theories. When used as the name of a field of study, history refers to the
study and interpretation of the record of humans, societies, institutions, and any topic that has changed over
time.

Traditionally, the study of history has been considered a part of the humanities. In modern academia,
whether or not history remains a humanities-based subject is contested. In the United States the National
Endowment for the Humanities includes history in its definition of humanities (as it does for applied
linguistics).[28] However, the National Research Council classifies history as a social science.[29] The
historical method comprises the techniques and guidelines by which historians use primary sources and
other evidence to research and then to write history. The Social Science History Association, formed in
1976, brings together scholars from numerous disciplines interested in social history.[30]

Law
The social science of law, jurisprudence, in common parlance,
means a rule that (unlike a rule of ethics) is capable of enforcement
through institutions.[31] However, many laws are based on norms
accepted by a community and thus have an ethical foundation. The
study of law crosses the boundaries between the social sciences and
humanities, depending on one's view of research into its objectives
and effects. Law is not always enforceable, especially in the
international relations context. It has been defined as a "system of
rules",[32] as an "interpretive concept" [33] to achieve justice, as an A trial at a criminal court, the Old
"authority" [34] to mediate people's interests, and even as "the Bailey in London
command of a sovereign, backed by the threat of a sanction". [35]

However one likes to think of law, it is a completely central social

institution. Legal policy incorporates the practical manifestation of thinking from almost every social science
and the humanities. Laws are politics, because politicians create them. Law is philosophy, because moral
and ethical persuasions shape their ideas. Law tells many of history's stories, because statutes, case law and
codifications build up over time. And law is economics, because any rule about contract, tort, property law,
labour law, company law and many more can have long-lasting effects on the distribution of wealth. The
noun law derives from the Old English lagu, meaning something laid down or fixed[36] and the adjective
legal comes from the Latin word lex.[37]

Linguistics
Linguistics investigates the cognitive and social aspects of human
language. The field is divided into areas that focus on aspects of the
linguistic signal, such as syntax (the study of the rules that govern
the structure of sentences), semantics (the study of meaning),
morphology (the study of the structure of words), phonetics (the
study of speech sounds) and phonology (the study of the abstract
sound system of a particular language); however, work in areas like
evolutionary linguistics (the study of the origins and evolution of
language) and psycholinguistics (the study of psychological factors
in human language) cut across these divisions.[38]

The overwhelming majority of modern research in linguistics takes

a predominantly synchronic perspective (focusing on language at a
particular point in time), and a great deal of it—partly owing to the Ferdinand de Saussure, recognized
influence of Noam Chomsky—aims at formulating theories of the as the father of modern linguistics
cognitive processing of language. However, language does not exist
in a vacuum, or only in the brain, and approaches like contact
linguistics, creole studies, discourse analysis, social interactional linguistics, and sociolinguistics explore
language in its social context. Sociolinguistics often makes use of traditional quantitative analysis and
statistics in investigating the frequency of features, while some disciplines, like contact linguistics, focus on
qualitative analysis. While certain areas of linguistics can thus be understood as clearly falling within the
social sciences, other areas, like acoustic phonetics and neurolinguistics, draw on the natural sciences.
Linguistics draws only secondarily on the humanities, which played a rather greater role in linguistic inquiry
in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Ferdinand Saussure is considered the father of modern linguistics.

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 behaviour. Fields and
subfields of political science include political economy, political
theory and philosophy, civics and comparative politics, theory of
direct democracy, apolitical governance, participatory direct
democracy, national systems, cross-national political analysis,
political development, international relations, foreign policy,
international law, politics, public administration, administrative
behaviour, public law, judicial behaviour, and public policy.
Political science also studies power in international relations and the
theory of great powers and superpowers.

Political science is methodologically diverse, although recent years

have witnessed an upsurge in the use of the scientific method,[40] Aristotle asserted that man is a
that is, the proliferation of formal-deductive model building and political animal in his Politics.[39]
quantitative hypothesis testing. Approaches to the discipline include
rational choice, classical political philosophy, interpretivism,
structuralism, and behaviouralism, realism, pluralism, and institutionalism. Political science, as one of the
social sciences, uses methods and techniques that relate to the kinds of inquiries sought: primary sources
such as historical documents, interviews, and official records, as well as secondary sources such as
scholarly articles, are used in building and testing theories. Empirical methods include survey research,
statistical analysis or econometrics, case studies, experiments, and model building.

Psychology
Psychology is an academic and applied field involving the study of
behaviour and mental processes.[41] 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.[42][43] The word psychology comes from the Ancient
Greek ψυχή (psyche, "soul" or "mind") and the suffix logy
("study").[44]

Psychology differs from anthropology, economics, political science, Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt was the
and sociology in seeking to capture explanatory generalizations founder of experimental psychology.
about the mental function and overt behaviour of individuals, while
the other disciplines focus on creating descriptive generalizations
about the functioning of social groups or situation-specific human behaviour. In practice, however, there is
quite a lot of cross-fertilization that takes place among the various fields. Psychology differs from biology
and neuroscience in that it is primarily concerned with the interaction of mental processes and behaviour,
and of the overall processes of a system, and not simply the biological or neural processes themselves,
though the subfield of neuropsychology combines the study of the actual neural processes with the study of
the mental effects they have subjectively produced.[45]

Many people associate psychology with clinical psychology,[46] 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.[47]

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: BPsy indicates a balance between natural and social sciences,
BSc indicates a strong (or entire) scientific concentration, whereas a BA underlines a majority of social
science credits. This is not always necessarily the case however, and in many UK institutions students
studying the BPsy, BSc, and BA follow the same curriculum as outlined by The British Psychological
Society and have the same options of specialism open to them regardless of whether they choose a balance,
a heavy science basis, or heavy social science basis to their degree. If they applied to read the BA. for
example, but specialized in heavily science-based modules, then they will still generally be awarded the
BA.

Sociology
Sociology is the systematic study of society, individuals'
relationship to their societies, the consequences of difference, and
other aspects of human social action.[48] 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.[49][50]

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.[51][52] Comte endeavoured to unify history,
psychology and economics through the descriptive understanding
of the social realm. He proposed that social ills could be remedied
through sociological positivism, an epistemological approach
outlined in The Course in Positive Philosophy [1830–1842] and A
General View of Positivism (1844). Though Comte is generally
regarded as the "Father of Sociology", the discipline was formally Émile Durkheim is considered one of
established by another French thinker, Émile Durkheim (1858– the founding fathers of sociology.
1917), who developed positivism as a foundation to practical social
research. Durkheim set up the first European department of
sociology at the University of Bordeaux in 1895, publishing his Rules of the Sociological Method. In 1896,
he established the journal L'Année sociologique. Durkheim's seminal monograph, Suicide (1897), a case
study of suicide rates among Catholic and Protestant populations, distinguished sociological analysis from
psychology or philosophy.[53]

Karl Marx rejected Comte's positivism but nevertheless aimed to establish a science of society based on
historical materialism, becoming recognized as a founding figure of sociology posthumously as the term
gained broader meaning. Around the start of the 20th century, the first wave of German sociologists,
including Max Weber and Georg Simmel, developed sociological antipositivism. The field may be broadly
recognized as an amalgam of three modes of social thought in particular: Durkheimian positivism and
structural functionalism; Marxist historical materialism and conflict theory; and Weberian antipositivism and
verstehen analysis. American sociology broadly arose on a separate trajectory, with little Marxist influence,
an emphasis on rigorous experimental methodology, and a closer association with pragmatism and social
psychology. In the 1920s, the Chicago school developed symbolic interactionism. Meanwhile, in the 1930s,
the Frankfurt School pioneered the idea of critical theory, an interdisciplinary form of Marxist sociology
drawing upon thinkers as diverse as Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche. Critical theory would take on
something of a life of its own after World War II, influencing literary criticism and the Birmingham School
establishment of cultural studies.

Sociology evolved as an academic response to the challenges of modernity, such as industrialization,

urbanization, secularization, and a perceived process of enveloping rationalization.[54] The field generally
concerns the social rules and processes that bind and separate people not only as individuals, but as
members of associations, groups, communities and institutions, and includes the examination of the
organization and development of human social life. The sociological field of interest ranges from the
analysis of short contacts between anonymous individuals on the street to the study of global social
processes. In the terms of sociologists Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, social scientists seek an
understanding of the Social Construction of Reality. Most sociologists work in one or more subfields. One
useful way to describe the discipline is as a cluster of sub-fields that examine different dimensions of
society. For example, social stratification studies inequality and class structure; demography studies changes
in population size or type; criminology examines criminal behaviour and deviance; and political sociology
studies the interaction between society and state.

Since its inception, sociological epistemologies, methods, and frames of enquiry, have significantly
expanded and diverged.[55] Sociologists use a diversity of research methods, collecting both quantitative
and qualitative data, draw upon empirical techniques, and engage critical theory.[52] Common modern
methods include case studies, historical research, interviewing, participant observation, social network
analysis, survey research, statistical analysis, and model building, among other approaches. Since the late
1970s, many sociologists have tried to make the discipline useful for purposes beyond the academy. The
results of sociological research aid educators, lawmakers, administrators, developers, and others interested
in resolving social problems and formulating public policy, through subdisciplinary areas such as evaluation
research, methodological assessment, and public sociology.

In the early 1970s, women sociologists began to question sociological paradigms and the invisibility of
women in sociological studies, analysis, and courses.[56] In 1969, feminist sociologists challenged the
discipline's androcentrism at the American Sociological Association's annual conference.[57] 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.[58]

New sociological sub-fields continue to appear — such as community studies, computational sociology,
environmental sociology, network analysis, actor-network theory, gender studies, and a growing list, many
of which are cross-disciplinary in nature.[59]

Additional fields of study

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.[60]
Area studies are interdisciplinary fields of research and scholarship pertaining to particular
geographical, national/federal, or cultural regions.[61]
Behavioural science is a term that encompasses all the disciplines that explore the activities
of and interactions among organisms in the natural world.[62]
Computational social science is an umbrella field encompassing computational approaches
within the social sciences.[63]
Demography is the statistical study of all human populations.[64]
Development studies a multidisciplinary branch of social science that addresses issues of
concern to developing countries.[65]
 Environmental social science is the broad, transdisciplinary study of interrelations between
humans and the natural environment.[66]
Environmental studies integrate social, humanistic, and natural science perspectives on the
relation between humans and the natural environment.[67]
Gender studies integrates several social and natural sciences to study gender identity,
masculinity, femininity, transgender issues, and sexuality.[68]
Information science is an interdisciplinary science primarily concerned with the collection,
classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval and dissemination of information.[69]
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).[70]
Legal management is a social sciences discipline that is designed for students interested in
the study of state and legal elements.[71]
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.[72]
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.[73]
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.[74]
Political economy is the study of production, buying and selling, and their relations with law,
custom, and government.[75]
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,[76] 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.[77]

Methodology

Social research
The origin of the survey can be traced back at least as early as the Domesday Book in 1086,[78][79] while
some scholars pinpoint the origin of demography to 1663 with the publication of John Graunt's Natural and
Political Observations upon the Bills of Mortality.[80] Social research began most intentionally, however,
with the positivist philosophy of science in the 19th century.
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 statistical hypothesis testing. A
mathematical model uses mathematical language to describe a system. The process of developing a
mathematical model is termed 'mathematical modelling' (also modeling). A mathematical model is "a
representation of the essential aspects of an existing system (or a system to be constructed) that presents
knowledge of that system in usable form".[81] Mathematical models can take many forms, including but not
limited to dynamical systems, statistical models, differential equations, or game theoretic models.

These and other types of models can overlap, with a given model involving a variety of abstract structures.
The system is a set of interacting or interdependent entities, real or abstract, forming an integrated whole.
The concept of an integrated whole can also be stated in terms of a system embodying a set of relationships
that are differentiated from relationships of the set to other elements, and from relationships between an
element of the set and elements not a part of the relational regime. A dynamical system modeled as a
mathematical formalization has a fixed "rule" that describes the time dependence of a point's position in its
ambient space. Small changes in the state of the system correspond to small changes in the numbers. The
evolution rule of the dynamical system is a fixed rule that describes what future states follow from the
current state. The rule is deterministic: for a given time interval only one future state follows from the
current state.

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,[82] 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.[83]

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.[84][85] 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).”[86] 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.[87]

Education and degrees

Most universities offer degrees in social science fields.[88] 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 Bachelor of Arts
degree, particularly if the field is within one of the traditional liberal arts such as history, or a BSc: Bachelor
of Science degree such as those given by the London School of Economics, as the social sciences constitute
one of the two main branches of science (the other being the natural sciences). In addition, some institutions
have degrees for a particular social science, such as the Bachelor of Economics degree, though such
specialized degrees are relatively rare in the United States.

Graduate students may receive a master's degree (Master of Arts, Master of Science or a field-specific
degree such as Master of Public Administration) or a doctoral degree (e.g. PhD).

Low priority of social science

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.[89] 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.[89]

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.[90] 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.[91][92] 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.[90]

People associated with the social sciences

Al-Kindi W.E.B. Dubois
Augustine Louis Dumont
Franz Boas Norbert Elias
Manuel Castells Friedrich Engels
Confucius Frantz Fanon
Wade Davis Milton Friedman
 Anthony Giddens John Stuart Mill
Erving Goffman Montesquieu
Thomas Hobbes Jean Piaget
Arlie Hochschild Steven Pinker
David Hume Plato
Marie Jahoda John Rawls
John Maynard Keynes David Ricardo
Ibn Khaldun Edward Said
Paul F. Lazarsfeld Jean-Baptiste Say
John Locke Alfred Schutz
John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury B.F. Skinner
Niklas Luhmann Adam Smith
Niccolò Machiavelli Herbert Spencer
Karl Marx Deborah Tannen
Marcel Mauss Victor Turner
Margaret Mead

See also
Society portal

Science portal
General
Outline of social science
Humanities
Structure and agency

Methods
Ethnography
Participatory action research
Representation theory

Other
Ethnology
Gulbenkian commission
Labelling
Obshestvovedeny
Philosophy of social sciences

Notes
a. A Bachelor of Social Science degree can be earned at the University of Adelaide, University
of Waikato (Hamilton, New Zealand), University of Sydney, University of New South Wales,
University of Hong Kong, University of Manchester, Lincoln University, New Zealand,
National University of Malaysia and University of Queensland.

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Michie, Jonathan, ed. Reader's Guide to the Social Sciences (2 vol. 2001) 1970 pages
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Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes (2001). International Encyclopedia of the Social &
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org/details/introductiontos00calvgoog). New York: Redfield.

General sources
Backhouse, Roger E., and Philippe Fontaine, eds. A historiography of the modern social
sciences (Cambridge University Press, 2014).
Backhouse, Roger E.; Fontaine, Philippe, eds. (2010). The History of the Social Sciences
Since 1945. Cambridge University Press.; covers the conceptual, institutional, and wider
histories of economics, political science, sociology, social anthropology, psychology, and
human geography.
Delanty, G. (1997). Social science: Beyond constructivism and realism. Minneapolis: Univ. of
Minnesota Press.
Hargittai, E. (2009). Research Confidential: Solutions to Problems Most Social Scientists
Pretend They Never Have (http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=268873). Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0472026531.
Hunt, E.F.; Colander, D.C. (2008). Social science: An introduction to the study of society (http
s://books.google.com/books?id=fWofAAAACAAJ). Boston: Peason/Allyn and Bacon.
ISBN 978-0-205-52406-8.
Carey, H.C.; McKean, K. (1883). Manual of social science; Being a condensation of the
Principles of social science (https://books.google.com/books?id=ckEVAAAAYAAJ).
Philadelphia: Baird.
Galavotti, M.C. (2003). Observation and experiment in the natural and social sciences (http
s://books.google.com/books?id=VpForyYAYy0C). Boston studies in the philosophy of
science. Vol. 232. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic. ISBN 978-1-4020-1251-8.
Gorton, W.A. (2006). Karl Popper and the social sciences. SUNY series in the philosophy of
the social sciences. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Harris, F.R. (1973). Social science and national policy (https://books.google.com/books?id=
mqQ9vf0JS_YC). New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books. ISBN 978-1-4128-3445-2.
distributed by Dutton
Krimerman, L.I. (1969). The nature and scope of social science: A critical anthology (https://ar
chive.org/details/naturescopeofsoc0000krim). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
ISBN 978-0-390-52678-6.
Rule, J.B. (1997). Theory and progress in social science (https://archive.org/details/theorypro
gressin0000rule). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-57365-8.
Shionoya, Y. (1997). Schumpeter and the idea of social science: A metatheoretical study.
Historical perspectives on modern economics (https://books.google.com/books?id=fakFiE79
qTAC). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 Singleton, Royce, A.; Straits, Bruce C. (1988). Approaches to Social Research (https://web.ar
chive.org/web/20070303032753/http://www.us.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Sociolog
y/TheoryMethods/~~/dmlldz11c2EmY2k9OTc4MDE5NTE0Nzk0MA%3D%3D). Oxford
University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-514794-0. Archived from the original (http://www.us.oup.co
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Thomas, D. (1979). Naturalism and social science: a post-empiricist philosophy of social
science (https://books.google.com/books?id=-mY4AAAAIAAJ). CUP Archive. ISBN 978-0-
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org/oclc/859836343).

Academic resources
The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, ISSN 1552-3349 (http
s://www.worldcat.org/search?fq=x0:jrnl&q=n2:1552-3349) (electronic) ISSN 0002-7162 (http
s://www.worldcat.org/search?fq=x0:jrnl&q=n2:0002-7162) (paper), Sage Publications
Efferson, C. and Richerson, P.J. (In press). A prolegomenon to nonlinear empiricism in the
human behavioral sciences. Philosophy and Biology. Full text (http://www.des.ucdavis.edu/f
aculty/richerson/Prolegomena%204%200.pdf)

Opponents and critics

George H. Smith (2014). Intellectuals and Libertarianism: Thomas Sowell and Robert Nisbet
(http://www.libertarianism.org/columns/intellectuals-libertarianism-thomas-sowell-robert-nisb
et)
Phil Hutchinson, Rupert Read and Wes Sharrock (2008). There's No Such Thing as a Social
Science (https://books.google.com/books?id=IF01zvRg9ekC). ISBN 978-0-7546-4776-8
Sabia, D.R., and Wallulis, J. (1983). Changing social science: Critical theory and other
critical perspectives (https://books.google.com/books?id=IgDtHi4Sq-wC). Albany: State
University of New York Press.

External links
Institute for Comparative Research in Human and Social Sciences (ICR) (http://icrhs.tsukub
a.ac.jp/en/) (JAPAN)
Centre for Social Work Research (https://web.archive.org/web/20091028070226/http://www.
uel.ac.uk/cswr/index.htm)
International Conference on Social Sciences (https://web.archive.org/web/20080312160638/
http://www.sobiad.org/icss-conference/icss-main.htm)
International Social Science Council (http://www.unesco.org/ngo/issc)
Introduction to Hutchinson et al., There's No Such Thing as a Social Science (http://www.ash
gate.com/pdf/SamplePages/There_is_No_Such_Thing_as_a_Social_Science_Intro.pdf)
Intute: Social Sciences (UK) (http://www.intute.ac.uk/socialsciences/)
 Social Science Research Society (http://www.sobiad.org/english.html)
Social Science Virtual Library (http://www.vl-site.org/index.html)
Social Science Virtual Library: Canaktanweb (Turkish) (http://www.canaktan.org/)
Social Sciences And Humanities (http://social-sciences-and-humanities.com/)
UC Berkeley Experimental Social Science Laboratory (http://xlab.berkeley.edu)
The Dialectic of Social Science (http://monthlyreview.org/100501baran.php) by Paul A.
Baran
American Academy Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences (http://www.humani
tiescommission.org/)

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