Skip to Main Content

Sociology

Overview of Sociology

According to The American Sociological Association, sociology is:

  • the study of society
  • a social science involving the study of the social lives of people, groups, and societies
  • the study of our behavior as social beings, covering everything from the analysis of short contacts between anonymous individuals on the street to the study of global social processes
  • the scientific study of social aggregations, the entities through which humans move throughout their lives
  • an overarching unification of all studies of humankind, including history, psychology, and economics

Related subjects include: Anthropology.

News and Popular Press

Popular press resources such as newspapers and magazines are expert but non-scholarly sources that report basic facts and offer opinions. One benefit of these sources is that they are printed shortly after an event, but they do not reach the level of analysis necessary for scholarly work. 

Dictionaries & Encyclopedias

Dictionaries are most often collections of words in one or more specific languages, usually arranged in alphabetical order, providing information like word meanings, usage, etymology, and, when they contain more than one language, translations. Some dictionaries include information more commonly found in encyclopedias.  Encyclopedias are collections of information on terms, figures, eras, locations also arranged alphabetically, and, alongside definitions of terms, they also include more in-depth general information on a topic. Encyclopedias can be general or subject-specific.