RECTO MEMORIAL NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL

Disciplines and Ideas in the Social Sciences

Quarter 2 : Professions
WEEK 6
The social sciences are intellectual disciplines that study man as a social being by means of the scientific
method. Their focus on man as a member of society and his groups distinguishes the social sciences from
the physical and biological sciences.

Social Sciences have five major umbrellas: anthropology, economics, political science, psychology, and
sociology. In addition, through social sciences professions, social issues and concerns could be address.

This module will discuss about the Professions.

After going through this module, you are expected to:

1. Analyze the practical use of social sciences in addressing social concerns and phenomenon (MELC)

Professions
Social science is the field of human knowledge that deals with all the aspects of human beings.
The connection between social science and social problems should be given a priority since it is concerned
with the social and economic advancement of humanity. Social sciences approach answers social issues
by using the step-by-step procedure such as; defining the problem; reviewing the literature review;
developing a theoretical framework and formulate hypothesis; choosing a research design, collecting
necessary data; analyzing the result and drawing a conclusion.
The social sciences may help us to figure out the complexities of human behavior and relations as
it attempts to solve the aforementioned societal problems. It is significant in the society as it may help
researchers solve the complexities of human behavior in order to help alleviate problems and improve
human condition.
A social problem is an issue within the society that makes it difficult for people to achieve their
full potential such as poverty; unemployment, unequal opportunity, and malnutrition are examples of
social problems. Crime and substance abuse are also examples of social problems. Not only do social
problems affect many people directly, but they also affect all of us indirectly. Social problems tend to
develop when we become neglectful and fail to see that serious problems are developing.

On the other hand, social issues are moral problems that affect a member or members of a society directly
or indirectly. Some of these issues includes the following:

Mass Unemployment

A jobless, as defined by international labor organization, occurs when people are without
jobs and they have actively look for work within the past four weeks.

Health care issues such as killer diseases (COVID-19)

It is a diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, injury and other physical and
mental impairments in human.
Human Rights Violations

It is the individual human dignity for the common good. These are rights inherent to all
human beings, whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, color,
religion, language, or any other status.

Natural Calamities

It is a disastrous event marked by great loss, lasting distress, and suffering such as floods,
earthquakes, typhoons, and drought.

Financial Crisis

A situation in which some financial institutions or assets suddenly lose a large part of their
value. Many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and many recessions coincided
with this panics.

Economic Inequality

A wealth and income differences that comprises all disparities in the distribution of
economic assets and income.

Terrorism

It refers only to those violent acts that are intended to create fear (terror) are perpetrated
for a religious, political or ideological goal, and deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-
combatants (civilians).

Global Warming

The continuing rise in the average temperature of Earth’s atmosphere and oceans and it
is caused by human activities that increase concentrations of greenhouse gases in the
atmosphere, such as deforestation and burning of fossil fuels.

Poverty and Food Shortage

The state of one who lacks a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute
poverty or destitution refers to being unable to afford basic human needs, which commonly
includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter.

Energy Crisis

Any great bottleneck or price rise in the supply of energy resources to an economy

Pollution (Air, Noise, Soil, Water)

A contamination of natural environment that causes instability, disorder, harm or discomfort

to the ecosystem.

Crime
 It is a breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe
a conviction.

Abortion

It is the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed
by the death of the embryo or fetus.

Overpopulation

It is a condition of having a population so dense as to cause environmental deterioration, an

impaired quality of life, or a population crash.

Corruption

Dishonest or illegal behavior especially by powerful people such as government officials or

police officers.

Early pregnancy

It is mostly unplanned that leads to the disruption of schooling, inadequate mothering, poor
child outcomes, etc. In addition, demographic concerns about increasing population.

Social Sciences and the Professions

The social sciences are intellectual disciplines that study man as a social being by means of the
scientific method. Their focus on man as a member of society and his groups distinguishes the social
sciences from the physical and biological sciences. Social sciences can be applied to address social concern
through several social science profession.

Five social sciences have been regarded as central: anthropology, economics, political science,
psychology, and sociology.

➢ Anthropologist - study the cultures of industrialized societies and produced fruitful work on such
important contemporary problems as poverty, ghetto life, minority groups, and mental health.
➢ Economist - engage in theoretical and empirical research on macroeconomic subjects—reaching
and maintaining full employment, avoiding inflation and deflation, understanding and promoting
economic growth, analyzing fiscal and monetary policies, defining balance and imbalance in
international payments; also on micro-economic subjects—market pricing, monopolies,
manpower, labor markets, union movements, farm issues, and problems resulting from
inequalities in income distribution and poverty.
➢ Geographer - they work on land features, inhabitants and phenomena of Earth.
➢ Sociologist - they worked on practical problems in a large number of different fields including law,
medicine, social work, business, criminology, education, public health, and gerontology. Their
major research tool is the sample survey, which has been skillfully used to collect information on
a vast number of questions pertinent to these different fields.
➢ Psychologist - deal with man's mental abilities and aptitudes, his capacities for learning, for
thinking, for emotional expression, and for motivation. Psychologists have developed intelligence
 and aptitude tests for a great variety of uses. They work on problems of learning in education,
problems of personnel selection in industry, and problems of clinical assessment in mental illness,
among many others.
➢ Political scientists - study a variety of phenomena involved in the process of government,
including political parties, interest groups, public opinion and communication, bureaucracy,
international relations, and administration. They engaged in assessing various aspects of the
political system, often leading to significant proposals for reform. Proposals in the field of "public
administration"—leading to the Civil Service system, centralized budgeting and the city-manager
concept—are illustrative.

Other important fields that deal with social phenomena are demography, history, human geography,
linguistics, and social statistics.

1. Demographers - work on large-scale manpower problems to estimate and predict the numbers
of persons in given categories of interest—for example, the number of 2021 human populations
in San Francisco, Quezon—births, deaths, life expectancy, and migration.
2. Historians - contribute a valuable perspective to analysis of current activities by providing a sense
of continuity over time; and their analysis of persons, movements, events, and concepts in the
past is extremely helpful in much other social science research.
3. Geographers - study such problems as the spread of new ideas between places; the perception
and control of environmental hazards such as floods and drought; and the general spatial
organization of metropolitan areas including such items as land value patterns, planning of human
and environmental systems, and intra-urban migrations. For example, Planning and mitigation for
the coastal areas in Quezon Province.
4. Linguistics - elicits language data to produce insights into the structure of language and the
meaning of specific language units. It investigates the basic characteristics of many languages—
their sound systems, grammatical categories, and rules of syntax. In this study of particular
languages, linguistics seeks to understand language in general. Anthropologists and linguists share
an interest in the unwritten language of primitive peoples; and the language of a people tells the
anthropologist a great deal about the culture and its origins. The language of an individual speaker
reveals information about social status, geographic origin, and personality that are of interest to
the psychologist and sociologist. The Psycholinguists study how children learn to use language.
5. Statistics - has broad applicability in all the sciences; but specific techniques have been developed
for the specific research needs of the social sciences. Multiple correlation and regression have
been developed to substitute for controlled laboratory experimentation. Sampling procedures;
factor analysis; handling of non-normally distributed observations; testing of hypotheses and
estimation of parameters from non-experimental data; decision theory and non-parametric
testing—these are methodological developments particularly important to social science.

Social scientists try to be as objectively independent as possible of their own biases. Obviously,
no scientist in the social area can be completely detached from his environment, but social scientists make
their methods public so that others may attempt to repeat their work and, thus, appraise their findings.

The contribution of the social sciences plays a major role in the professions particularly in
education but most of all in medicine, public health, social work and law.

There are seven professions utilizing social sciences such as education, engineering, journalism,
law, medicine and public health, mental health, and social work.

1. Education: The profession of education has traditionally enjoyed a close relationship with the
social sciences. Current educational practice has been influenced by psychological theories of
learning; the results of experiments in social psychology; and sociological research-especially
studies of complex organizations, small groups, and inter-group relations.
2. Engineering: In the roles they have played in industry, consulting, and public works development,
engineers have long had needs for (and made use of) social science knowledge. New product and
process developments have required economic analysis—engineers engaged in public works
development, in particular, have long enjoyed fruitful interrelationships with economists.
3. Journalism: The social sciences can assist the mass media in reporting current social issues in
depth and putting them in context. Nevertheless, with few notable exceptions, the relationship
between journalism and the social sciences has never been close. Rarely do journalists, for
instance, make more than spasmodic use of available social science knowledge when reporting
unrest.
4. Law: Legal institutions can be used as bases for social and economic change. Programs designed
to foster such change require knowledge about the relationship between law and other
institutions in developing societies.
5. Medicine and Public Health: medicine serves and contributes to public health; the health of the
public is also protected and restored largely by non-medical measures.
6. Mental Health Work: As in the larger field of health and medicine generally, relationships
between social factors and mental health or disorder have long been recognized. Mental
disorders disrupt the shared understandings that make social life possible; frequently they lead
to hostility and conflict between the ill person and those family members and friends. Therefore,
the social context in which mental illness is defined and responded to takes on special significance.
7. Social Work: Social work began to emerge as a profession and its activities have been increasingly
based on knowledge from the social sciences. Its earliest focus on the amelioration of personal
problems has led it inexorably to concern for the improvement of social conditions.

What’s More

Research and listen to the song “Patuloy ang pangarap” by Angeline Quinto, answer the following
questions after:

1. What does the song imply about ambition?

2. What is the significance of having ambition in life?

3. What lyrics of the song inspired you the most?

4. How does the singer/ composer express her positivity in achieving her ambition in life?

5. Did you see yourself working on your dream profession five years from now?

6. Which field are you interested?

7. What profession are best suited on your ability? Why?

What Can I do?
Instruction: Complete the diagram below. Identify specific social issues/ concerns and provide solutions
using the social science professions.

Social Issues

Political Education
Economics

Environmenta Health and Gender and

l Sanitation Inequality
 RECTO MEMORIAL NATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL
Disciplines and Ideas in the Social Sciences
Quarter 2 – Approaches in Social Phenomena
WEEK 7
This module was created and written with you in mind. It is here to help you to understand deeper about
social sciences in the real world. The scope of this module permits it to be used in many different learning
situations. The language used recognizes the diverse vocabulary level of students.

This module will discuss the Social Phenomenonn using different Social Science Approaches.

After going through this module, you are expected to:

1. Generate an analysis of a social phenomenon using at least two approaches from the Social
Sciences [HUMSS_DIS 11-IVi-j-8]

Social Phenomena
Social Phenomena
Social phenomena are a product of human activity, a result of the development and work of
society. According to Durkheim, social phenomena is a distinctive social characteristics and determinants,
which are not amenable to explanations on the biological or psychological level. In addition, they are
external to any particular individual considered as a biological entity. It refers to the interactions between
and among individuals, and to the characteristics, structures, and functions of social groups and
institutions, such as families, communities, schools, and workplaces, as well as the physical, economic,
cultural, and policy environments in which social and behavioral phenomena occur.

Social Phenomenon

A social phenomenon affects and infiltrates society in nearly every aspect. It apply especially to
organisms and people in those subjective states are implicit in the term. It also involves one person's
observable behavior influencing another person. Knowledge and experiences of an individual are the most
important aspects of social phenomena. These are considered as including all behavior, which influences
or is influenced by organisms sufficiently alive to respond to one another. In addition, it happen in society
or social set-up and we all are aware of the most of the happen able behavior, about what we do not
know, we learn from socialization agencies. It always attract people in society and people as a member of
society are interested on it and interpreted by people.

A phenomenon is an extraordinary occurrence or circumstance. The word phenomenon is derived

from the Greek verb phainein, which means to show, shine, and appear, to manifest or to be manifest. In
a scientific context, it is something that is observed to occur or to exist. While, phenomena are events or
people that are observed that are unusual or unexplainable.

A social phenomenon is any behavior that responds to other behavior whether contemporary or
historical. It has includes all behavior which influences or is influenced by organisms sufficiently alive to
respond to one another. This includes influences from past generations. A socialized person is part of
society. A person never creates himself; all this is the result of a long-term and fruitful cooperation with
society. The relationship of each individual person with society may be different due to the diversity of
social phenomena.

Kinds of Social Phenomena

It categorized in a number of ways. Here are a few of the many possibilities:

o Natural phenomena are those that occur or manifest without human input like gravity, tides,
biological processes and oscillation.
o Social phenomena are those that occur or exist through the actions of groups of humans like six
degrees of separation in social networking.
o Psychological phenomena are those manifested in human behaviors and responses.
 Sunk Cost Effect, the tendency for humans to continue investing in something that clearly is
not working.
 Hawthorne Effect, demonstrated by an improvement in human behavior or performance
because of increased attention from superiors, clients or colleagues.
o Visual phenomena include optical illusions, such as the peripheral drift illusion in which people
perceive movement in static images like Kitaoka Akiyoshi's rotating snakes
o Socio-cultural phenomena are created by society and culture, as opposed to something that
occurs “naturally” in the world, like earthquakes, viruses, or acts of weather.
o Socio-political Phenomena focuses on a triad of related problems. The constituting a community
bound together by a normative order, the establishing the legitimacy and the terms of
enforcement of such an order, and, finding the criteria for a proper and just allocation of resources
as well as of entitlements.
o Socio-religious Phenomena refers to a range of approaches that address religion as apprehended,
religious experience, and religious worldviews. It emphasize understanding religious phenomena
according to the subjective meanings and actions of individuals engaging in religious experience,
rather than based on neutral observations.
o Socio-economic Phenomena focuses on the relationship between social behavior and economics
and it offers a sociological account on the production, consumption, distribution, and transfer of
assets, goods, and services. It examines how social norms, ethics, emerging popular sentiments,
and other social philosophies influence consumer behavior, shape public buying trends and
predict potential results from changes to society or the economy.
o Behavioral Social Phenomena is refers to the observable actions of individuals or groups and to
mental phenomena such as knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, motivations, perceptions, cognition's,
and emotions.
o Historical Social Phenomena Is refers to the ways in which previous actions or events influence
the lives of and behaviors of a particular person or group.

Social Constructed Phenomena

o Rituals and practices is often used simply as a specific, distinctive activity and a label for
senseless routine, while practices seeks to determine the link between practice and context
within social situations
o Kinship networks are defined broadly as extended family, including biological relationships,
genealogy, marriage, and other self-ascribed associations, beyond the family nucleus of parents
and dependent children. This relationship is important because of its implications for contact and
association among members of a society
o Behavioral social norms are informal understandings that govern the behavior of members of a
society and recognizes smaller group units may also endorse norms separately or in additio n to
cultural or societal expectations. It is generally accepted the way of thinking, feeling, or
behaving that is endorsed and expected because it is perceived as the right and proper
thing to do. It is a rule, value or standard shared by the members of a social group that
prescribes appropriate, expected or desirable attitudes and conduct in matters relevant
to the group” (Turner, 1991, p. 3).
o Language connects and separates people depends on knowledge of the elements of language and
the social context in which language is spoken. In a conversation between individuals, information
is not only in the basic meaning of the words spoken, but also can signal other information about
the speakers, situation, and the relationship between the participants. It is considered as a social
phenomenon because all human beings communicate with their respective speech communities
using the language they speak. That through language, day-today interactions are possible, it is
with the help of language interpersonal relations are possible.
o Clothing Style or fashion define as being first with the latest. It revolves around imitation and
diffusion, and it applies to all domains of social life. Fashion revealed the link between the modus
derivatives and the term ‘modern,’ with its original meaning of ‘now’ or ‘for today.’
o Racism is a social phenomenon because it is an ideology that people have constructed that
directly affects another group, forcing them to change their behaviors.
o Marriage rites is also a social phenomenon because it is an observable act for which people have
created and applied meaning, which alters the concept of love and relationships as that meaning
evolves.
o Competition is the most fundamental form of social struggle, an impersonal, unconscious,
continuous struggle between individuals or groups for satisfaction.
o Conflict is an individual's reactions to inequality might be different depending on the groups with
which they are associated. It is a social interaction generate beliefs and solidarity between
individuals and groups within a society.
o Divorce is focused on the nature and quality of interpersonal relationships. It is a continuum of
marital instability and a poor decisions in mate selection which lead to marital conflicts
o Religion experienced by human beings in groups or through forms created by social organizations
as a social phenomenon and these beliefs have consequences for one’s social behavior.
o Atheism is the view that there is no God, an apparent lack of interest in how religion propagates
in society is odd coming from people who so deplore its prevalence.
o Social movements are broad alliances of people connected through a shared interest in either
stopping or instigating social change.
o School Violence in the same school has occurred in the form of strikes, bullying, and
demonstrations. Education is critical for training individuals in the need for accommodating
everyone in the society, but the school violence has destroyed such hopes.
o Drug Use this war continues to rage on without an end in sight; drug misuse continues to be a
social phenomenon with reaches into health care, psychiatry, social policy, criminology, human
rights, politics and even economics.
o Culture is considered as a social phenomenon or the very society because everything somehow
relates to society.
o Video Games are becoming culturally dominant. Gamers are probably the most social people.
Today, video games are the highest selling form of entertainment media today. However, it has
led many skeptics of the industry to condemn it as a source of embedding violent behavior in
our youth.
 The two sides of social phenomena and processes are closely interconnected by causal logic: a
process is the creation of a phenomenon, and a process creates a phenomenon. Due to this, the social
value of phenomena and processes is formed. The Inner-psychic expresses the subjectivity of mental
experiences and feelings, reflected in the phenomenon. In addition, the externally symbolic, objectifies
subjectivity, materializes it.

The emergence of society has become an important stage for progress in the development of
humankind. Who is responsible for the fact that individual individuals are perceived as one whole,
interconnected? The emergence of various social phenomena of different levels at different times
testified and continues to testify to the movement of humanity forward. They help to control and predict
development, are the subject of study of many social sciences, starting with sociology and ending with
history.

WHAT CAN I DO?

An open letter is playing a growing role in modern communication because it is an excellent way of
reaching a wide audience. It is open to the public, not a closed and private communication between two
individuals. Write an open letter addressed to a politicians or public officials in your own municipality/city
addressing the problems and issues affecting students and youth.