The article What is Sociology? dealt with the difficulties in pinpointing the definition of sociology. THe author described natural sciences and social sciences before further exploring the different types of social sciences. The article presented other types of social sciences in order to help the reader understand how sociology was similar as well as different from other social sciences.
One of the main sections of the article that stood out to me was the section describing juvenile delinquency. By describing how the different types of social scientists would conduct their studies and what they would focus on, I grasped a stringer understanding for the definition of sociology. For instance, a psychologist would try to to explore the characteristics within the delinquent whereas a sociologist would focus on something such as social class and routines of the police. I thought it was interesting that the article further went into describing how sociologists would push the study of juvenile delinquency to tho point that they would be asking what being a juvenile delinquent is. Our definitions and preconceptions of delinquents are very different from people who were born and raised in earlier generations. Our definition of delinquency can even differ from state to state. I also learned that there are also two types of sociology: structural/interactional and quantitative/qualitative. Structural/interactional studies are done more through interviews, while quantitative/qualitative studies read deeper into the meaning of peoples behavior. In all of sociology, however, the question remains "What external forces push people to behave the way they do and why?".
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