Sociology Definition Sociology

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This Essay aims to define what is meant by the term sociology by examining the perspectives of key sociologists, attempts to outline what makes sociology different from other social sciences and explains what is meant by the sociological perspective and how this can be used to think sociologically, and finally how sociology is changing within modern society due to the processes of globalisation.

Sociology, in the broadest sense, attempts to study all aspects of society as a whole and the relationships, human behaviour and human interactions within society. Sociology looks at all aspects of society at all scales; such as the relationships between nations and also the relationships between individuals. This wide scope of interest is what makes …show more content…

In the sociological imagination, Mills describes this as ‘the vivid awareness of the relationship between personal experience and the wider society in which individuals are embedded. Mills attempts to distinguish the difference between a personal trouble and a wider societal issue by identifying the balance between a person’s agency and personal actions and the influence that wider societal structures can have on a persons individual trouble .The sociological perspective also involves trying to see the ‘strange in the familiar’ by trying to imagine seeing the world for the first time and therefore assuming that you do not already have a common sense understanding of society developed by socialisation, in which you gained the understanding of your own cultural norms and values and practices, which are taken for granted as being the ‘norm’. This involves understanding why the norms and values in other cultures can seem strange to us and how our own cultural norms and values could be seen as strange to

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