DEFINATION AND SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY

Sociology a social science that studies human societies, their interactions, and the processes
that preserve and change them. Sociology’s subject matter is diverse, ranging from crime to
religion, from the family to the state, from the divisions of race and social class to the shared
beliefs of a common culture, and from social stability to radical change in whole societies.
Unifying the study of these diverse subjects of study is sociology’s purpose of understanding
how human action and consciousness both shape and are shaped by surrounding cultural and
social structures. Sociology offers a distinctive and enlightening way of seeing and
understanding the social world in which we live and which shapes our lives.
Focusing on the study of human relationships and society, Sociology as a discipline explores the
operational structure of society and its different social constructs from the notion of religion to
family, class, race, crime and much more. The scope of Sociology begins with the connection
between human beings and society and expands further towards the social institutions that
impact our lives and the factors that dominate the proper functioning of these institutions. It
sets out to explain how human beings have constructed these institutions, how they perceive
them and the role they play in our lives.
Sociologists investigate the structure of groups, organizations, and societies, and how people
interact within these contexts.

Scope
Sociology refers to social behavior, society, patterns of social relationships, social interaction,
and culture that surrounds everyday life.
There are two schools of thought with different viewpoints regarding scope and subject matter
of sociology- formal school and synthetic school. According to formal school sociology was
conceived to be a social science with a specifically defined field. This school had George Simmel,
Ferdinand Tonnies, Alfred Vierkandt and Leopord Von Wiese as its main advocates. On the
other hand the synthetic school with Durkheim, Hobhouse and Sorokin advocated a synthesis in
form of coordination among all social sciences. Formal School of Sociology Formal school
argued in favor of giving sociology a definite subject matter to make it a distinct
discipline. It emphasized upon the study of forms of social relationships and regarded sociology
as independent. According to Simmel sociology is a specific social science which describes,
classifies, analyses and delineates the forms of social relationships or in other words social
interactions should be classified into various forms or types and analysed. Simmel argued that
social interactions have various forms. He carried out studies of such formal relationships as
cooperation, competition, sub and super ordinate relationships and so forth.

Its scope includes study of social groups, social institutions and social processes. Scope of
Sociology is more in the direction of an analysis of social problems and not in normative
suggestion of solutions for these social problems.

Sociologists also utilize some aspects of these other fields. Psychology and sociology, for
instance, share an interest in the subfield of social psychology, although psychologists
traditionally focus on individuals and their mental mechanisms. Sociology devotes most of its
attention to the collective aspects of human behaviour, because sociologists place greater
emphasis on the ways external groups influence the behaviour of individuals.