Lecture Schedule & Note

Department of Humanities & Social Sciences

Spring 2020

Course
Code Course Title Course Instructor
SS-304 SOCIOLOGY Umar Rafique
Session
No. Topi Dat
c e
1 Relationship with other social Science
2 Sociological perspective
Development of Sociology

Topics/Questions/ Allocated Notes/Answers/Definitions/Examples

Activities Time (Mins)
Recap 10
Questions related to 10 
last Lecture
Oral Quiz 10 
(ungraded)
Relationship with 20  What are Social Sciences?
other social sciences.
 Sociology & Political Science
 Sociology is a general science of society.
It studies human interaction and inter-
relations their conditions and
consequences. Political Science is a
science of state and Government. It
studies power, political processes,
political systems, types of government
and international relations. It deals with
social groups organised under the
sovereign of the state.
 Sociology & History
 History studies the important past events
and incidents. It records men past life and
life of societies in a systematic and
chronological order. It also tries to find
out the causes of past events. It also
 studies the past political, social and
economic events of the world.
 Sociology & Economics
 Economics deals with economic activities
of man. It is a science of wealth and
choice. According to Prof. Robbins
Economics is a social “science which
studies human behavior in relation to his
unlimited ends and scarce means which
have alternative uses.” It is concerned
with the activities of man such as
production, consumption, distribution and
exchange. It also studies the structure and
functions of different economic
organizations like banks, markets etc. It is
concerned with the material needs of man
as well as his material welfare.
 Sociology & Psychology
 Sociology and Psychology are very
closely interlinked interrelated and
interdependent. Relationship between the
two is so close and intimate that
Psychologist like Karl Pearson refuses to
accept both as special science. Both
depend on each other for their own
comprehension. Their relationship will be
clear if we analyze their inter-relationship
and mutual dependency.
 Sociology & Anthropology
 The term Anthropology is derived from
two Greek words ‘anthropos’ meaning
man and ‘logos’ meaning study or
science. Accordingly anthropology means
study of man. As a science of man it deals
 with man, his works and behavior.
Anthropology studies the biological and
cultural development of man.
Anthropology has a wide field of study
which can be broadly divided into three
main divisions such as physical
anthropology. Archeology cultural
anthropology and social anthropology.
Physical anthropology studies bodily
characteristics of early man and thereby
try to understand both primitive and
modern cultures.
Sociological 20  Theories vary in scope depending on the
Perspectives
scale of the issues that they are meant to
explain. Macro-level theories relate to
large-scale issues and large groups of
people, while micro-level theories look at
very specific relationships between
individuals or small groups.
  Paradigms are philosophical and
theoretical frameworks used within a
discipline to formulate theories,
generalizations, and the experiments
performed in support of them. Three
paradigms have come to dominate
sociological thinking, because they
provide useful explanations: structural
functionalism, conflict theory, and
symbolic interactionism.

Sociological Paradigm Level of Analysis

Structural Functionalism Macro or mid

Conflict Theory Macro

Symbolic Interactionism Micro

 Symbolic interactionism views symbols,
things to which we attach meaning, as the
basis of social life. a) Through the use of
symbols people are able to define
relationships to others, to coordinate
actions with others, making social life
possible, and to develop a sense of
themselves. b) A symbolic interactionist
studying divorce would focus on the
changing meaning of marriage; family and
divorce have all contributed to the
increase in the rate of divorce in U.S.
society.
 The central idea of Functional analysis is
that society is a whole unit, made up of
interrelated parts that work together. a) To
understand society, we must look at both
structure, how the parts of society fit
together to make up the whole, the
function, how each part contributes to
society. b) Robert Merton used the term
function to refer to the beneficial
consequences of people’s actions to keep
society stable and dysfunctions to refer to
consequences that undermine stability.
Functions can be either manifest (actions
that are intended) or latent (unintended
consequences). c) In trying to explain
divorce, functionalist would look at how
industrialization and urbanization both
contributed to the changing function of
marriage and the family.
 According to Conflict theory, society is
viewed as composed of groups competing
 for scarce resources. a) Karl Marx focused
on struggles between the bourgeoisie, the
small group of capitalists who own the
means of production, and the proletariat,
the masses of workers exploited by the
capitalists. b) Contemporary conflict
theorists have expanded this perspective
to include conflict in all relations of power
and authority. c) Divorce is seen as the
outcome of the shifting balance of power
within a family; as women have gained
power and try to address inequalities in
their relationships, men resist.

Development of  Various stages of growth

Sociology
 Theological ideas
 Faith in divine phenomena
 In the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, Western Europe was rocked by
technical, economic, and social changes
that forever changed the social
order.  Science and technology were
developing rapidly.  James Watt invented
the steam engine in 1769, and in 1865
Joseph Lister discovered that an antiseptic
barrier could be placed between a wound
and germs in the atmosphere to inhibit
infection.  These and other scientific
developments spurred social changes and
offered hope that scientific methods might
help explain the social as well as the
natural world.  This trend was part of a
more general growth in rationalism.  
 The industrial revolution began
 in Britain in the late eighteenth
century.  By the late nineteenth century,
the old order was collapsing “under the
twin blows of industrialism and
revolutionary democracy” (Nisbet, 1966:
21).  Mechanical industry was growing,
and thousants of people were migrating to
cities to work in the new factories.  People
once rooted in the land and social
communities where they farmed found
themselves crowded into cities.  The
traditional authority of the church, the
village, and the family were being
undermined by impersonal factory and
city life.
 Capitalism also grew in Western
Europe in the nineteenth century.  This
meant that relatively few people owned
the means of production—such as
factories—while many others had to sell
their labor to those owners.  At the same
time, relatively impersonal financial
markets began to expand.  The modern
epoch was also marked by the
development of administrative state
power, which involved increasing
concentrations of information and armed
power (Giddens, 1987: 27).
 Finally, there was enormous population
growth worldwide in this period, due to
longer life expectancy and major
decreases in child death rates.  These
massive social changes lent new urgency
to the deveopment of the social sciences,
 as early sociological thinkers struggled
with the vast implications of economic,
social and political revolutions.  All the
major figures in the early years of
sociology thought about the “great
transformation” from simple, preliterate
societies to massive, complex, industrial
societies.

Post Session Instructions:

Preparing for next session: The students must study the reading material provided on Google
Classroom and prepare to discuss in next class.