DISCIPLINES

OR
BRANCHES IN
THE SOCIAL
SCIENCES
 Social science studies the
historical, cultural, sociological,
psychological, and the political
forces that shape the actions of
individuals and their impact on
society.
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• Anthropology
• Demography
• Economics
• Geography
• Linguistics
• History
• political science
• Psychology and
• sociology
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ANTHROPOLOG
Y
 ANTHROPOLOGY
✘ the study of ancient societies and their cultural traditions
✘ came from the Greek word anthropos meaning "humankind" and logos meaning the
"study“
✘ In studying culture, anthropologists investigate the people's language, their values,
technologies, and even how they group themselves. They also study the way the
cultural traditions of different groups of people have changed over the years.
✘ has two broad fields, physical and cultural.

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 ANTHROPOLOGY
Physical anthropology
✘ is also called biological anthropology,
studies the biological evolution of man. It
also provides explanations on the reason
behind the biological variations among
contemporary human population
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Cultural anthropology
✘ investigates and seeks to
understand the cultural features
of societies.
✘ divided into three sub-branches:
archaeology, anthropological
linguistics, and ethnology.
 ANTHROPOLOGY
o Archaeology
✘ Archaeology seeks to
reconstruct the past life of
ancient societies, trace the
cultural changes that took place
and the reason behind the
changes. They reconstruct the
past using the fossil remains of
human culture
Cultural anthropology
o Anthropological
Linguistics
✘ Anthropological linguistics
involves the study of language in
societies or communities where
language may or may not be
written. It is also concerned with
the emergence of languages, the
divergence of languages, and the
changes in the languages across
time.
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o Ethnology
✘
Ethnologists study marriage
customs. kinship patterns.
economic systems. and religious
rites of cultural groups. and
compare it with the way of life of
contemporary societies.
✘ ethnology uses data gathered
through observations and
interviews with living people
ECONOMICS
 ECONOMICS
✘ Economics is the study of the efficient allocation of scarce resources in order to satisfy
unlimited human needs and wants.
✘ The word Economics came from two Greek words, oikos meaning 'home' and nomos
meaning 'management'.
✘ Factors of production - Economic resources that can be used to produce goods and
services.
-It is classified into four categories: land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship.
✘ Economics is classified into two scopes: Microeconomics and Macroeconomics.
 ECONOMICS
Factors of production

Land
- is anything that comes from nature and which gives life
and support to all living creatures.
- It also refers to immovable properties where industries
are built.
Labor
- refers to any human effort exerted during the production
process which includes physical exertion, application of
skills or talent or exercise of intellectual faculties.

Capital Entrepreneurship
- refers to anything that can be used to create or - this is the ability to organize all the other factors of production
manufacture goods and services. in order to carry out effectively the production process. This
skill involves ability to organize, take risks, introduce a new
product, and generally create something of value.

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 ECONOMICS
✘ Microeconomics
- Microeconomics is the "study of the choices made by economic factors such as households, companies, and individual
markets

✘ Macroeconomics
- Macroeconomics "examines the behavior of entire economies."
- Microeconomics studies the choices of individuals as consumers and as workers. It also studies firms that produce the
goods and services, and the industries from which the firms operate.
- Macroeconomics tackles the aggregates or total values that describe the whole economy. One very important
aggregate is the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP measures the total output or the market value of goods and
services that a country produces in one year.
- Other macroeconomic indicators include employment, economic growth, interest rates, and inflation

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GEOGRAPH
Y
 GEOGRAPHY
✘ Geography studies the interaction between the natural environment and the
people living in it.
✘ It acts as a bridge between natural science and social science.
✘ Geography comes from two Greek words: geo meaning 'Earth' and graphos
meaning 'charting or mapping'.
✘ Geography is divided into two main branches: physical and human,
 GEOGRAPHY
✘ Physical geography
- studies the natural features of the earth, like
climate, water, vegetation, and soil.
- One approach in studying physical
geography is to look at the physical
environment as the provider of natural
resources, like food and water.
- Another approach is to look at the physical
environment as hazard to human life.
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✘ Human geography
- studies human population and the impact
of its activities on the planet. Some of
these activities include agriculture,
urbanization, and land reclamation.
- This branch of geography examines how
people use the resources available to
them and how they cultivate their
environment to suit their needs.
history
 history
✘ History is traditionally regarded as the study of the recorded past.
✘ It comes from the Greek noun ἱστορία or historia, meaning –“learning”.
✘ As used by the Greek philosopher Aristotle, history meant a systematic account of a set of
natural phenomena, whether or not chronological ordering was a factor in the account .
✘ The discipline attempts to reconstruct the past given the available sources.
✘ There are two types of historical sources: primary and secondary.
 history
✘ Primary source
- is a testimony of an eyewitness or an account of
someone who has first-hand information on the
subject. It has to be written or recounted by
someone who is contemporary to the event being
narrated.
- A primary source does not have to be an original
source. It can be a rewritten, recopied, or a
translated version of the original.
- Examples of primary sources include journal
entries, transcripts, video interviews, monuments
or structures,
✘ Secondary source
- are one step removed from primary sources, though
they often quote or otherwise use primary sources.
They can cover the same topic, but add a layer of
interpretation and analysis. Secondary sources can
include:
- Most books about a topic.
- Analysis or interpretation of data.
- Scholarly or other articles about a topic,
especially by people not directly involved.
- Documentaries (though they often include
photos or video portions that can be considered
primary sources).
 LINGUISTICS
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 LINGUISTICS
✘ Linguistics came from the Latin word lingua, meaning "language."
✘ The discipline studies the nature of language through an examination of the
formal properties of natural language, grammar, and the process of language
acquisition.
✘ Language plays an important role in both cognition and culture of society.
✘ Among the things that linguists study are phonetics, phonology,
morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.

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Phonetics
-is the study of speech sounds. It
examines how the sounds are made
and identifies its properties..
Syntax
- is the study of how words are
combined to form a sentence
LINGUISTICS
Phonology Morphology
- study of speech sound pattern - is the study of how words are
- It identifies what sounds are there categorized or formed
and the categories these speech
sounds fall under.
Pragmatics
Semantics
- study of the language context.
- is the study of meaning-making.
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 POLITICAL
SCIENCE

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 POLITICAL SCIENCE
✘ Political science is the study of politics, power, and government.
✘ The word politics comes from the Greek word politea, or a person who
participates in the polio.
✘ Politics is the process of using power in the government, while power is the
means for the government to rule the people.
✘ Government is the authority or the bureaucracy that provides the system of rule
over its territory and for its people.
 PSYCHOLOGY

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 PSYCHOLOGY
✘ It is the scientific study of behavior and mental processes.
✘ This includes the physical state and the mental state and how
this all relates to the environment of the individual.
✘ It comes from two Greek words, psyche meaning –”soul” or
"spirit," and logos meaning ‘study'.
✘ Psychology is divided into three major fields: clinical,
developmental, and experimental.
 PSYCHOLOGY
✘ Clinical ✘ Developmental ✘ Experimental psychology
psychology psychology - studies the most basic concepts
- assesses and finds of psychology like cognition,
- studies the intellectual,
treatment for people perception, memory, ate learning
social, emotional, and moral
with psychological but mostly conducted on animals
development across a
disorders instead of humans.
lifespan. The focus maybe
narrowed down to a specific
period in life like early
childhood or preadolescent.

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 Sociology
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 Sociology
✘ It is the systematic study of human society.
✘ It comes from the Latin word socius meaning "friend" or "companion" and the Greek
word logos meaning "study."
✘ Sociology studies how people relate to each other and how they work as a whole in the
larger society.
✘ The sociological perspective sees the general in the particular. “
✘ We begin to think sociologically (when we realize) how the general categories into which
we fall shape our particular life experiences”.
✘ Social rules of behavior, societal expectations, and norms guide an individual's actions,
thoughts, and feelings.
✘ Sociology was born as a result of powerful and complex economic and tic social forces.
 Demography
✘ Is the study of human population.
✘ It comes from two ancient Greek words, demos
meaning the people and graphos meaning charting or
mapping.
✘ Basic demographic concepts are fertility, mortality,
migration and population.

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 Demography
✘ Fertility
- Is the incidence of child bearing in a country’s population.

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THANKS!
Any questions?

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