Social science

Social science is a category of academic

disciplines, concerned with society and
the relationships among individuals
within a society. Social science as a
whole has many branches. These social
sciences include, but are not limited to:
anthropology, archaeology,
communication studies, economics,
history, musicology, human geography,
jurisprudence, linguistics, political
science, psychology, public health, and
sociology. The term is also sometimes
used to refer specifically to the field of
sociology, the original "science of
society", established in the 19th century.
For a more detailed list of sub-disciplines
within the social sciences see: Outline of
social science.

Positivist social scientists use methods

resembling those of the natural sciences
as tools for understanding society, and
so define science in its stricter modern
sense. Interpretivist social scientists, by
contrast, may use social critique or
symbolic interpretation rather than
constructing empirically falsifiable
theories, and thus treat science in its
broader sense. In modern academic
practice, researchers are often eclectic,
using multiple methodologies (for
instance, by combining both quantitative
and qualitative research). The term
"social research" has also acquired a
degree of autonomy as practitioners
from various disciplines share in its aims
and methods.

History
The history of the social sciences begins
in the Age of Enlightenment after 1650,[1]
which saw a revolution within natural
philosophy, changing the basic
framework by which individuals
understood what was "scientific". Social
sciences came forth from the moral
philosophy of the time and were
influenced by the Age of Revolutions,
such as the Industrial Revolution and the
French Revolution.[2] The social sciences
developed from the sciences
(experimental and applied), or the
systematic knowledge-bases or
prescriptive practices, relating to the
social improvement of a group of
interacting entities.[3][4]

The beginnings of the social sciences in

the 18th century are reflected in the
grand encyclopedia of Diderot, with
articles from Jean-Jacques Rousseau
and other pioneers. The growth of the
social sciences is also reflected in other
specialized encyclopedias. The modern
period saw "social science" first used as
a distinct conceptual field.[5] Social
science was influenced by positivism,[2]
focusing on knowledge based on actual
positive sense experience and avoiding
the negative; metaphysical speculation
was avoided. Auguste Comte used the
term "science sociale" to describe the
field, taken from the ideas of Charles
Fourier; Comte also referred to the field
as social physics.[2][6]

Following this period, there were five

paths of development that sprang forth
in the social sciences, influenced by
Comte on other fields.[2] One route that
was taken was the rise of social
research. Large statistical surveys were
undertaken in various parts of the United
States and Europe. Another route
undertaken was initiated by Émile
Durkheim, studying "social facts", and
Vilfredo Pareto, opening metatheoretical
ideas and individual theories. A third
means developed, arising from the
methodological dichotomy present, in
which social phenomena were identified
with and understood; this was
championed by figures such as Max
Weber. The fourth route taken, based in
economics, was developed and furthered
economic knowledge as a hard science.
The last path was the correlation of
knowledge and social values; the
antipositivism and verstehen sociology
of Max Weber firmly demanded this
distinction. In this route, theory
(description) and prescription were non-
overlapping formal discussions of a
subject.

Around the start of the 20th century,

Enlightenment philosophy was
challenged in various quarters. After the
use of classical theories since the end of
the scientific revolution, various fields
substituted mathematics studies for
experimental studies and examining
equations to build a theoretical structure.
The development of social science
subfields became very quantitative in
methodology. The interdisciplinary and
cross-disciplinary nature of scientific
inquiry into human behaviour, social and
environmental factors affecting it, made
many of the natural sciences interested
in some aspects of social science
methodology.[7] Examples of boundary
blurring include emerging disciplines like
social research of medicine,
sociobiology, neuropsychology,
bioeconomics and the history and
sociology of science. Increasingly,
quantitative research and qualitative
methods are being integrated in the
study of human action and its
implications and consequences. In the
first half of the 20th century, statistics
became a free-standing discipline of
applied mathematics. Statistical
methods were used confidently.

In the contemporary period, Karl Popper

and Talcott Parsons influenced the
furtherance of the social sciences.[2]
Researchers continue to search for a
unified consensus on what methodology
might have the power and refinement to
connect a proposed "grand theory" with
the various midrange theories that, with
considerable success, continue to
provide usable frameworks for massive,
growing data banks; for more, see
consilience. The social sciences will for
the foreseeable future be composed of
different zones in the research of, and
sometime distinct in approach toward,
the field.[2]

The term "social science" may refer either

to the specific sciences of society
established by thinkers such as Comte,
Durkheim, Marx, and Weber, or more
generally to all disciplines outside of
"noble science" and arts. By the late 19th
century, the academic social sciences
were constituted of five fields:
jurisprudence and amendment of the law,
education, health, economy and trade,
and art.[3]

Around the start of the 21st century, the

expanding domain of economics in the
social sciences has been described as
economic imperialism.[8]

Branches
 Social science areas
The following are problem areas and
discipline branches within the social
sciences.[2]
Anthropology
Area studies
Business studies
Civics
Communication studies
Criminology
Demography
Development studies
Ecology
Economics
Education
Environmental studies
Gender studies
Geography
History
Industrial relations
Information science
Law
Library science
Linguistics
Media studies
Oceanography
Paleontology
Political science
Psychology
 Public administration
Sociology
Social work
Sustainable development

The social science disciplines are

branches of knowledge taught and
researched at the college or university
level. Social science disciplines are
defined and recognized by the academic
journals in which research is published,
and the learned social science societies
and academic departments or faculties
to which their practitioners belong. Social
science fields of study usually have
several sub-disciplines or branches, and
the distinguishing lines between these
are often both arbitrary and ambiguous.

Anthropology

Anthropology is the holistic "science of

man", a science of the totality of human
existence. The discipline deals with the
integration of different aspects of the
social sciences, humanities, and human
biology. In the twentieth century,
academic disciplines have often been
institutionally divided into three broad
domains. The natural sciences seek to
derive general laws through reproducible
and verifiable experiments. The
humanities generally study local
traditions, through their history, literature,
music, and arts, with an emphasis on
understanding particular individuals,
events, or eras. The social sciences have
generally attempted to develop scientific
methods to understand social
phenomena in a generalizable way,
though usually with methods distinct
from those of the natural sciences.

The anthropological social sciences

often develop nuanced descriptions
rather than the general laws derived in
physics or chemistry, or they may explain
individual cases through more general
principles, as in many fields of
psychology. Anthropology (like some
fields of history) does not easily fit into
one of these categories, and different
branches of anthropology draw on one or
more of these domains.[9] Within the
United States, anthropology is divided
into four sub-fields: archaeology, physical
or biological anthropology,
anthropological linguistics, and cultural
anthropology. It is an area that is offered
at most undergraduate institutions. The
word anthropos (ἄνθρωπος) in Ancient
Greek means "human being" or "person".
Eric Wolf described sociocultural
anthropology as "the most scientific of
the humanities, and the most humanistic
of the sciences."
The goal of anthropology is to provide a
holistic account of humans and human
nature. This means that, though
anthropologists generally specialize in
only one sub-field, they always keep in
mind the biological, linguistic, historic
and cultural aspects of any problem.
Since anthropology arose as a science in
Western societies that were complex and
industrial, a major trend within
anthropology has been a methodological
drive to study peoples in societies with
more simple social organization,
sometimes called "primitive" in
anthropological literature, but without
any connotation of "inferior".[10] Today,
anthropologists use terms such as "less
complex" societies or refer to specific
modes of subsistence or production,
such as "pastoralist" or "forager" or
"horticulturalist" to refer to humans living
in non-industrial, non-Western cultures,
such people or folk (ethnos) remaining of
great interest within anthropology.

The quest for holism leads most

anthropologists to study a people in
detail, using biogenetic, archaeological,
and linguistic data alongside direct
observation of contemporary
customs.[11] In the 1990s and 2000s,
calls for clarification of what constitutes
a culture, of how an observer knows
where his or her own culture ends and
another begins, and other crucial topics
in writing anthropology were heard. It is
possible to view all human cultures as
part of one large, evolving global culture.
These dynamic relationships, between
what can be observed on the ground, as
opposed to what can be observed by
compiling many local observations
remain fundamental in any kind of
anthropology, whether cultural, biological,
linguistic or archaeological.[12]

Communication studies

Communication studies deals with

processes of human communication,
commonly defined as the sharing of
symbols to create meaning. The
discipline encompasses a range of
topics, from face-to-face conversation to
mass media outlets such as television
broadcasting. Communication studies
also examines how messages are
interpreted through the political, cultural,
economic, and social dimensions of their
contexts. Communication is
institutionalized under many different
names at different universities, including
"communication", "communication
studies", "speech communication",
"rhetorical studies", "communication
science", "media studies",
"communication arts", "mass
communication", "media ecology", and
"communication and media science".

Communication studies integrates

aspects of both social sciences and the
humanities. As a social science, the
discipline often overlaps with sociology,
psychology, anthropology, biology,
political science, economics, and public
policy, among others. From a humanities
perspective, communication is
concerned with rhetoric and persuasion
(traditional graduate programs in
communication studies trace their
history to the rhetoricians of Ancient
Greece). The field applies to outside
disciplines as well, including engineering,
architecture, mathematics, and
information science.

Economics

Economics is a social science that seeks

to analyze and describe the production,
distribution, and consumption of
wealth.[13] The word "economics" is from
the Ancient Greek οἶκος oikos, "family,
household, estate", and νόμος nomos,
"custom, law", and hence means
"household management" or
"management of the state". An
economist is a person using economic
concepts and data in the course of
employment, or someone who has
earned a degree in the subject. The
classic brief definition of economics, set
out by Lionel Robbins in 1932, is "the
science which studies human behavior
as a relation between scarce means
having alternative uses". Without scarcity
and alternative uses, there is no
economic problem. Briefer yet is "the
study of how people seek to satisfy
needs and wants" and "the study of the
financial aspects of human behavior".
 

Buyers bargain for good prices while sellers put

forth their best front in Chichicastenango Market,
Guatemala.

Economics has two broad branches:

microeconomics, where the unit of
analysis is the individual agent, such as a
household or firm, and macroeconomics,
where the unit of analysis is an economy
as a whole. Another division of the
subject distinguishes positive
economics, which seeks to predict and
explain economic phenomena, from
normative economics, which orders
choices and actions by some criterion;
such orderings necessarily involve
subjective value judgments. Since the
early part of the 20th century, economics
has focused largely on measurable
quantities, employing both theoretical
models and empirical analysis.
Quantitative models, however, can be
traced as far back as the physiocratic
school. Economic reasoning has been
increasingly applied in recent decades to
other social situations such as politics,
law, psychology, history, religion,
marriage and family life, and other social
interactions. This paradigm crucially
assumes (1) that resources are scarce
because they are not sufficient to satisfy
all wants, and (2) that "economic value"
is willingness to pay as revealed for
instance by market (arms' length)
transactions. Rival heterodox schools of
thought, such as institutional economics,
green economics, Marxist economics,
and economic sociology, make other
grounding assumptions. For example,
Marxist economics assumes that
economics primarily deals with the
investigation of exchange value, of which
human labour is the source.

The expanding domain of economics in

the social sciences has been described
as economic imperialism.[8][14]
Education

A depiction of world's oldest university, the

University of Bologna, in Italy

Education encompasses teaching and

learning specific skills, and also
something less tangible but more
profound: the imparting of knowledge,
positive judgement and well-developed
wisdom. Education has as one of its
fundamental aspects the imparting of
culture from generation to generation
(see socialization). To educate means 'to
draw out', from the Latin educare, or to
facilitate the realization of an individual's
potential and talents. It is an application
of pedagogy, a body of theoretical and
applied research relating to teaching and
learning and draws on many disciplines
such as psychology, philosophy,
computer science, linguistics,
neuroscience, sociology and
anthropology.[15]

The education of an individual human

begins at birth and continues throughout
life. (Some believe that education begins
even before birth, as evidenced by some
parents' playing music or reading to the
baby in the womb in the hope it will
influence the child's development.) For
some, the struggles and triumphs of daily
life provide far more instruction than
does formal schooling (thus Mark
Twain's admonition to "never let school
interfere with your education"). Family
members may have a profound
educational effect — often more
profound than they realize — though
family teaching may function very
informally.

Geography
 
Map of the Earth

Geography as a discipline can be split

broadly into two main sub fields: human
geography and physical geography. The
former focuses largely on the built
environment and how space is created,
viewed and managed by humans as well
as the influence humans have on the
space they occupy. This may involve
cultural geography, transportation, health,
military operations, and cities. The latter
examines the natural environment and
how the climate, vegetation and life, soil,
oceans, water and landforms are
produced and interact.[16] Physical
geography examines phenomena related
to the measurement of earth. As a result
of the two subfields using different
approaches a third field has emerged,
which is environmental geography.
Environmental geography combines
physical and human geography and looks
at the interactions between the
environment and humans.[17] Other
branches of geography include social
geography, regional geography, and
geomatics.

Geographers attempt to understand the

Earth in terms of physical and spatial
relationships. The first geographers
focused on the science of mapmaking
and finding ways to precisely project the
surface of the earth. In this sense,
geography bridges some gaps between
the natural sciences and social sciences.
Historical geography is often taught in a
college in a unified Department of
Geography.

Modern geography is an all-

encompassing discipline, closely related
to GISc, that seeks to understand
humanity and its natural environment.
The fields of urban planning, regional
science, and planetology are closely
related to geography. Practitioners of
geography use many technologies and
methods to collect data such as GIS,
remote sensing, aerial photography,
statistics, and global positioning systems
(GPS).

History

History is the continuous, systematic

narrative and research into past human
events as interpreted through
historiographical paradigms or theories.

History has a base in both the social

sciences and the humanities. In the
United States the National Endowment
for the Humanities includes history in its
definition of humanities (as it does for
applied linguistics).[18] However, the
National Research Council classifies
history as a social science.[19] The
historical method comprises the
techniques and guidelines by which
historians use primary sources and other
evidence to research and then to write
history. The Social Science History
Association, formed in 1976, brings
together scholars from numerous
disciplines interested in social history.[20]

Law

 
A trial at a criminal court, the Old Bailey in London

The social science of law, jurisprudence,

in common parlance, means a rule that
(unlike a rule of ethics) is capable of
enforcement through institutions.[21]
However, many laws are based on norms
accepted by a community and thus have
an ethical foundation. The study of law
crosses the boundaries between the
social sciences and humanities,
depending on one's view of research into
its objectives and effects. Law is not
always enforceable, especially in the
international relations context. It has
been defined as a "system of rules",[22] as
an "interpretive concept"[23] to achieve
justice, as an "authority"[24] to mediate
people's interests, and even as "the
command of a sovereign, backed by the
threat of a sanction".[25] However one
likes to think of law, it is a completely
central social institution. Legal policy
incorporates the practical manifestation
of thinking from almost every social
science and the humanities. Laws are
politics, because politicians create them.
Law is philosophy, because moral and
ethical persuasions shape their ideas.
Law tells many of history's stories,
because statutes, case law and
codifications build up over time. And law
is economics, because any rule about
contract, tort, property law, labour law,
company law and many more can have
long-lasting effects on the distribution of
wealth. The noun law derives from the
late Old English lagu, meaning something
laid down or fixed[26] and the adjective
legal comes from the Latin word lex.[27]

Linguistics

 
Ferdinand de Saussure, recognized as the father of
modern linguistics

Linguistics investigates the cognitive and

social aspects of human language. The
field is divided into areas that focus on
aspects of the linguistic signal, such as
syntax (the study of the rules that govern
the structure of sentences), semantics
(the study of meaning), morphology (the
study of the structure of words),
phonetics (the study of speech sounds)
and phonology (the study of the abstract
sound system of a particular language);
however, work in areas like evolutionary
linguistics (the study of the origins and
evolution of language) and
psycholinguistics (the study of
psychological factors in human
language) cut across these divisions.

The overwhelming majority of modern

research in linguistics takes a
predominantly synchronic perspective
(focusing on language at a particular
point in time), and a great deal of it—
partly owing to the influence of Noam
Chomsky—aims at formulating theories
of the cognitive processing of language.
However, language does not exist in a
vacuum, or only in the brain, and
approaches like contact linguistics,
creole studies, discourse analysis, social
interactional linguistics, and
sociolinguistics explore language in its
social context. Sociolinguistics often
makes use of traditional quantitative
analysis and statistics in investigating
the frequency of features, while some
disciplines, like contact linguistics, focus
on qualitative analysis. While certain
areas of linguistics can thus be
understood as clearly falling within the
social sciences, other areas, like acoustic
phonetics and neurolinguistics, draw on
the natural sciences. Linguistics draws
only secondarily on the humanities,
which played a rather greater role in
linguistic inquiry in the 19th and early
20th centuries. Ferdinand Saussure is
considered the father of modern
linguistics.

Political science

Aristotle asserted that man is a political animal in

his Politics.[28]

Political science is an academic and

research discipline that deals with the
theory and practice of politics and the
description and analysis of political
systems and political behaviour. Fields
and subfields of political science include
political economy, political theory and
philosophy, civics and comparative
politics, theory of direct democracy,
apolitical governance, participatory direct
democracy, national systems, cross-
national political analysis, political
development, international relations,
foreign policy, international law, politics,
public administration, administrative
behaviour, public law, judicial behaviour,
and public policy. Political science also
studies power in international relations
and the theory of great powers and
superpowers.
Political science is methodologically
diverse, although recent years have
witnessed an upsurge in the use of the
scientific method,[29] that is, the
proliferation of formal-deductive model
building and quantitative hypothesis
testing. Approaches to the discipline
include rational choice, classical political
philosophy, interpretivism, structuralism,
and behaviouralism, realism, pluralism,
and institutionalism. Political science, as
one of the social sciences, uses methods
and techniques that relate to the kinds of
inquiries sought: primary sources such
as historical documents, interviews, and
official records, as well as secondary
sources such as scholarly articles are
used in building and testing theories.
Empirical methods include survey
research, statistical analysis or
econometrics, case studies, experiments,
and model building. Herbert Baxter
Adams is credited with coining the
phrase "political science" while teaching
history at Johns Hopkins University.

Psychology

Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt was the founder of

experimental psychology.
Psychology is an academic and applied
field involving the study of behaviour and
mental processes. Psychology also
refers to the application of such
knowledge to various spheres of human
activity, including problems of individuals'
daily lives and the treatment of mental
illness. The word psychology comes from
the Ancient Greek ψυχή psyche ("soul",
"mind") and logy ("study").

Psychology differs from anthropology,

economics, political science, and
sociology in seeking to capture
explanatory generalizations about the
mental function and overt behaviour of
individuals, while the other disciplines
focus on creating descriptive
generalizations about the functioning of
social groups or situation-specific human
behaviour. In practice, however, there is
quite a lot of cross-fertilization that takes
place among the various fields.
Psychology differs from biology and
neuroscience in that it is primarily
concerned with the interaction of mental
processes and behaviour, and of the
overall processes of a system, and not
simply the biological or neural processes
themselves, though the subfield of
neuropsychology combines the study of
the actual neural processes with the
study of the mental effects they have
subjectively produced. Many people
associate psychology with clinical
psychology, which focuses on
assessment and treatment of problems
in living and psychopathology. In reality,
psychology has myriad specialties
including social psychology,
developmental psychology, cognitive
psychology, educational psychology,
industrial-organizational psychology,
mathematical psychology,
neuropsychology, and quantitative
analysis of behaviour.

Psychology is a very broad science that

is rarely tackled as a whole, major block.
Although some subfields encompass a
natural science base and a social
science application, others can be clearly
distinguished as having little to do with
the social sciences or having a lot to do
with the social sciences. For example,
biological psychology is considered a
natural science with a social scientific
application (as is clinical medicine),
social and occupational psychology are,
generally speaking, purely social
sciences, whereas neuropsychology is a
natural science that lacks application out
of the scientific tradition entirely. In
British universities, emphasis on what
tenet of psychology a student has
studied and/or concentrated is
communicated through the degree
conferred: B.Psy. indicates a balance
between natural and social sciences,
B.Sc. indicates a strong (or entire)
scientific concentration, whereas a B.A.
underlines a majority of social science
credits. This is not always necessarily
the case however, and in many UK
institutions students studying the B.Psy,
B.Sc, and B.A. follow the same
curriculum as outlined by The British
Psychological Society and have the same
options of specialism open to them
regardless of whether they choose a
balance, a heavy science basis, or heavy
social science basis to their degree. If
they applied to read the B.A. for example,
but specialized in heavily science-based
modules, then they will still generally be
awarded the B.A.

Sociology

Émile Durkheim is considered one of the founding

fathers of sociology.

Sociology is the systematic study of

society, individuals' relationship to their
societies, the consequences of
difference, and other aspects of human
social action.[30] The meaning of the
word comes from the suffix "-logy", which
means "study of", derived from Ancient
Greek, and the stem "soci-", which is from
the Latin word socius, meaning
"companion", or society in general.

Auguste Comte (1798–1857) coined the

term, Sociology, as a way to apply natural
science principles and techniques to the
social world in 1838.[31][32] Comte
endeavoured to unify history, psychology
and economics through the descriptive
understanding of the social realm. He
proposed that social ills could be
remedied through sociological
positivism, an epistemological approach
outlined in The Course in Positive
Philosophy [1830–1842] and A General
View of Positivism (1844). Though Comte
is generally regarded as the "Father of
Sociology", the discipline was formally
established by another French thinker,
Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), who
developed positivism as a foundation to
practical social research. Durkheim set
up the first European department of
sociology at the University of Bordeaux in
1895, publishing his Rules of the
Sociological Method. In 1896, he
established the journal L'Année
Sociologique. Durkheim's seminal
monograph, Suicide (1897), a case study
of suicide rates among Catholic and
Protestant populations, distinguished
sociological analysis from psychology or
philosophy.[33]

Karl Marx rejected Comte's positivism

but nevertheless aimed to establish a
science of society based on historical
materialism, becoming recognized as a
founding figure of sociology
posthumously as the term gained
broader meaning. Around the start of the
20th century, the first wave of German
sociologists, including Max Weber and
Georg Simmel, developed sociological
antipositivism. The field may be broadly
recognized as an amalgam of three
modes of social thought in particular:
Durkheimian positivism and structural
functionalism; Marxist historical
materialism and conflict theory; and
Weberian antipositivism and verstehen
analysis. American sociology broadly
arose on a separate trajectory, with little
Marxist influence, an emphasis on
rigorous experimental methodology, and
a closer association with pragmatism
and social psychology. In the 1920s, the
Chicago school developed symbolic
interactionism. Meanwhile, in the 1930s,
the Frankfurt School pioneered the idea
of critical theory, an interdisciplinary
form of Marxist sociology drawing upon
thinkers as diverse as Sigmund Freud
and Friedrich Nietzsche. Critical theory
would take on something of a life of its
own after World War II, influencing
literary criticism and the Birmingham
School establishment of cultural studies.

Sociology evolved as an academic

response to the challenges of modernity,
such as industrialization, urbanization,
secularization, and a perceived process
of enveloping rationalization.[34] The field
generally concerns the social rules and
processes that bind and separate people
not only as individuals, but as members
of associations, groups, communities
and institutions, and includes the
examination of the organization and
development of human social life. The
sociological field of interest ranges from
the analysis of short contacts between
anonymous individuals on the street to
the study of global social processes. In
the terms of sociologists Peter L. Berger
and Thomas Luckmann, social scientists
seek an understanding of the Social
Construction of Reality. Most sociologists
work in one or more subfields. One
useful way to describe the discipline is
as a cluster of sub-fields that examine
different dimensions of society. For
example, social stratification studies
inequality and class structure;
demography studies changes in a
population size or type; criminology
examines criminal behaviour and
deviance; and political sociology studies
the interaction between society and
state.

Since its inception, sociological

epistemologies, methods, and frames of
enquiry, have significantly expanded and
diverged.[35] Sociologists use a diversity
of research methods, collect both
quantitative and qualitative data, draw
upon empirical techniques, and engage
critical theory.[32] Common modern
methods include case studies, historical
research, interviewing, participant
observation, social network analysis,
survey research, statistical analysis, and
model building, among other
approaches. Since the late 1970s, many
sociologists have tried to make the
discipline useful for purposes beyond the
academy. The results of sociological
research aid educators, lawmakers,
administrators, developers, and others
interested in resolving social problems
and formulating public policy, through
subdisciplinary areas such as evaluation
research, methodological assessment,
and public sociology.

In the early 1970s, women sociologists

began to question sociological
paradigms and the invisibility of women
in sociological studies, analysis, and
courses.[36] In 1969, feminist sociologists
challenged the discipline's androcentrism
at the American Sociological
Association's annual conference.[37] This
led to the founding of the organization
Sociologists for Women in Society, and,
eventually, a new sociology journal,
Gender & Society. Today, the sociology of
gender is considered to be one of the
most prominent sub-fields in the
discipline.

New sociological sub-fields continue to

appear — such as community studies,
computational sociology, environmental
sociology, network analysis, actor-
network theory, gender studies, and a
growing list, many of which are cross-
disciplinary in nature.

Additional fields of study

Additional applied or interdisciplinary
fields related to the social sciences
include:

Archaeology is the science that studies

human cultures through the recovery,
documentation, analysis, and
interpretation of material remains and
environmental data, including
architecture, artifacts, features,
biofacts, and landscapes.
Area studies are interdisciplinary fields
of research and scholarship pertaining
to particular geographical,
national/federal, or cultural regions.
Behavioural science is a term that
encompasses all the disciplines that
explore the activities of and
interactions among organisms in the
natural world.
Computational social science is an
umbrella field encompassing
computational approaches within the
social sciences.
Demography is the statistical study of
all human populations.
Development studies a
multidisciplinary branch of social
science that addresses issues of
concern to developing countries.
Environmental social science is the
broad, transdisciplinary study of
interrelations between humans and the
natural environment.
Environmental studies integrate social,
humanistic, and natural science
perspectives on the relation between
humans and the natural environment.
Gender studies integrates several
social and natural sciences to study
gender identity, masculinity, femininity,
transgender issues, and sexuality.
Information science is an
interdisciplinary science primarily
concerned with the collection,
classification, manipulation, storage,
retrieval and dissemination of
information.
International studies covers both
International relations (the study of
foreign affairs and global issues
among states within the international
system) and International education
(the comprehensive approach that
intentionally prepares people to be
active and engaged participants in an
interconnected world).
Legal management is a social
sciences discipline that is designed for
students interested in the study of
state and legal elements.
Library science is an interdisciplinary
field that applies the practices,
perspectives, and tools of
management, information technology,
education, and other areas to libraries;
the collection, organization,
preservation and dissemination of
information resources; and the political
economy of information.
Management consists of various levels
of leadership and administration of an
organization in all business and human
organizations. It is the effective
execution of getting people together to
accomplish desired goals and
objectives through adequate planning,
executing and controlling activities.
Marketing the identification of human
needs and wants, defines and
measures their magnitude for demand
and understanding the process of
consumer buying behaviour to
formulate products and services,
pricing, promotion and distribution to
satisfy these needs and wants through
exchange processes and building long
term relationships.
Political economy is the study of
production, buying and selling, and
their relations with law, custom, and
government.
Public administration is one of the
main branches of political science, and
can be broadly described as the
development, implementation and
study of branches of government
policy. The pursuit of the public good
by enhancing civil society and social
justice is the ultimate goal of the field.
Though public administration has been
historically referred to as government
management,[38] it increasingly
encompasses non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) that also operate
with a similar, primary dedication to
the betterment of humanity.
 Religious studies and Western esoteric
studies incorporate and inform social-
scientific research on phenomena
broadly deemed religious. Religious
studies, Western esoteric studies, and
the social sciences developed in
dialogue with one another.[39]

Methodology
Social research

The origin of the survey can be traced

back at least early as the Domesday
Book in 1086,[40][41] while some scholars
pinpoint the origin of demography to
1663 with the publication of John
Graunt's Natural and Political
Observations upon the Bills of
Mortality.[42] Social research began most
intentionally, however, with the positivist
philosophy of science in the 19th
century.

In contemporary usage, "social research"

is a relatively autonomous term,
encompassing the work of practitioners
from various disciplines that share in its
aims and methods. Social scientists
employ a range of methods in order to
analyse a vast breadth of social
phenomena; from census survey data
derived from millions of individuals, to
the in-depth analysis of a single agent's
social experiences; from monitoring what
is happening on contemporary streets, to
the investigation of ancient historical
documents. The methods originally
rooted in classical sociology and
statistical mathematics have formed the
basis for research in other disciplines,
such as political science, media studies,
and marketing and market research.

Social research methods may be divided

into two broad schools:

Quantitative designs approach social

phenomena through quantifiable
evidence, and often rely on statistical
analysis of many cases (or across
intentionally designed treatments in an
 experiment) to create valid and reliable
general claims.
Qualitative designs emphasize
understanding of social phenomena
through direct observation,
communication with participants, or
analysis of texts, and may stress
contextual and subjective accuracy
over generality.

Social scientists will commonly combine

quantitative and qualitative approaches
as part of a multi-strategy design.
Questionnaires, field-based data
collection, archival database information
and laboratory-based data collections are
some of the measurement techniques
used. It is noted the importance of
measurement and analysis, focusing on
the (difficult to achieve) goal of objective
research or statistical hypothesis testing.
A mathematical model uses
mathematical language to describe a
system. The process of developing a
mathematical model is termed
'mathematical modelling' (also
modeling). Eykhoff (1974) defined a
mathematical model as 'a representation
of the essential aspects of an existing
system (or a system to be constructed)
that presents knowledge of that system
in usable form'.[43] Mathematical models
can take many forms, including but not
limited to dynamical systems, statistical
models, differential equations, or game
theoretic models.

These and other types of models can

overlap, with a given model involving a
variety of abstract structures. The
system is a set of interacting or
interdependent entities, real or abstract,
forming an integrated whole. The
concept of an integrated whole can also
be stated in terms of a system
embodying a set of relationships that are
differentiated from relationships of the
set to other elements, and from
relationships between an element of the
set and elements not a part of the
relational regime. A dynamical system
modeled as a mathematical
formalization has a fixed "rule" that
describes the time dependence of a
point's position in its ambient space.
Small changes in the state of the system
correspond to small changes in the
numbers. The evolution rule of the
dynamical system is a fixed rule that
describes what future states follow from
the current state. The rule is
deterministic: for a given time interval
only one future state follows from the
current state.

Social scientists often conduct

Program_Evaluation, which is a
systematic method for collecting,
analyzing, and using information to
answer questions about projects,
policies and programs[44], particularly
about their effectiveness and efficiency.
In both the public and private sectors,
stakeholders often want to know whether
the programs they are funding,
implementing, voting for, receiving or
objecting to are producing the intended
effect. While program evaluation first
focuses around this definition, important
considerations often include how much
the program costs per participant, how
the program could be improved, whether
the program is worthwhile, whether there
are better alternatives, if there are
unintended outcomes, and whether the
program goals are appropriate and
useful.[45]

Social sciences are criticized for

neglecting the moral element of human
behavior. Economists tend to focus on
self-interest. Clinical psychologists—on
the effects of early socialization.
Anthropologists tend to assume moral
relativism. Sociologists often blame the
System for immoral behavior. Socio-
biologists tend to assume limited choice
behavior. All this, critics hold, contrasts
with the fact that life is a constant
wrestle between people's moral
commitments and urges that pull them
to violate these commitments.[46]
Theory

Other social scientists emphasize the

subjective nature of research. These
writers share social theory perspectives
that include various types of the
following:

Critical theory is the examination and

critique of society and culture, drawing
from knowledge across social
sciences and humanities disciplines.
Dialectical materialism is the
philosophy of Karl Marx, which he
formulated by taking the dialectic of
Hegel and joining it to the materialism
of Feuerbach.
Feminist theory is the extension of
feminism into theoretical, or
philosophical discourse; it aims to
understand the nature of gender
inequality.
Marxist theories, such as revolutionary
theory and class theory, cover work in
philosophy that is strongly influenced
by Karl Marx's materialist approach to
theory or is written by Marxists.
Phronetic social science is a theory
and methodology for doing social
science focusing on ethics and
political power, based on a
contemporary interpretation of
Aristotelian phronesis.
Post-colonial theory is a reaction to the
cultural legacy of colonialism.
Postmodernism refers to a point of
departure for works of literature,
drama, architecture, cinema, and
design, as well as in marketing and
business and in the interpretation of
history, law, culture and religion in the
late 20th century.
Rational choice theory is a framework
for understanding and often formally
modeling social and economic
behaviour.
Social constructionism considers how
social phenomena develop in social
contexts.
 Structuralism is an approach to the
human sciences that attempts to
analyze a specific field (for instance,
mythology) as a complex system of
interrelated parts.
Structural functionalism is a
sociological paradigm that addresses
what social functions various elements
of the social system perform in regard
to the entire system.

Other fringe social scientists delve in

alternative nature of research. These
writers share social theory perspectives
that include various types of the
following:
 Intellectual critical-ism describes a
sentiment of critique towards, or
evaluation of, intellectuals and
intellectual pursuits.
Scientific criticalism is a position
critical of science and the scientific
method.

Education and degrees

Most universities offer degrees in social
science fields.[47] The Bachelor of Social
Science is a degree targeted at the social
sciences in particular. It is often more
flexible and in-depth than other degrees
that include social science subjects.[a]
In the United States, a university may
offer a student who studies a social
sciences field a Bachelor of Arts degree,
particularly if the field is within one of the
traditional liberal arts such as history, or
a BSc: Bachelor of Science degree such
as those given by the London School of
Economics, as the social sciences
constitute one of the two main branches
of science (the other being the natural
sciences). In addition, some institutions
have degrees for a particular social
science, such as the Bachelor of
Economics degree, though such
specialized degrees are relatively rare in
the United States.
See also
General
Outline of social science
Society
Culture
Structure and agency
Humanities (human science)
Methods
Historical method
Empiricism
Representation theory
Scientific method
Statistical hypothesis testing
Regression
Correlation
Terminology
Participatory Action Research
Areas
Political sciences
Natural sciences
Behavioural sciences
Geographic information science
History
History of science
History of technology
Lists
Fields of science
Outline of academic disciplines
People
Aristotle
Plato
Confucius
Augustine
Niccolò Machiavelli
Émile Durkheim
Max Weber
Karl Marx
Friedrich Engels
Herbert Spencer
Sir John Lubbock
Alfred Schutz
Adam Smith
David Ricardo
Jean-Baptiste Say
John Maynard Keynes
Robert Lucas
Milton Friedman
Sigmund Freud
Jean Piaget
Noam Chomsky
B.F. Skinner
John Stuart Mill
Thomas Hobbes
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Montesquieu
John Locke
David Hume
Auguste Comte
Steven Pinker
 John Rawls
Other
Behaviour
Ethology and Ethnology
Game theory
Gulbenkian commission
Labelling
Periodic table of human sciences
(Tinbergen's four questions)
Social action
Philosophy of social sciences

Notes
a. A Bachelor of Social Science degree
can be earned at the University of
Adelaide, University of Waikato
 (Hamilton, New Zealand), University
of Sydney, University of New South
Wales, University of Hong Kong,
University of Manchester, Lincoln
University, New Zealand, National
University of Malaysia and University
of Queensland.

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The Annals of the American Academy

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 ISSN 0002-7162 (paper), SAGE
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Opponents and critics

George H. Smith (2014). Intellectuals

and Libertarianism: Thomas Sowell and
Robert Nisbet
Phil Hutchinson, Rupert Read and Wes
Sharrock (2008). There's No Such
Thing as a Social Science . ISBN 978-0-
7546-4776-8
 Sabia, D.R., and Wallulis, J. (1983).
Changing social science: Critical theory
and other critical perspectives . Albany:
State University of New York Press.

External links

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