Social Science
Social Science
Social Science
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Contents
1History
2Branches
o 2.1Anthropology
o 2.2Communication studies
o 2.3Economics
o 2.4Education
o 2.5Geography
o 2.6History
o 2.7Law
o 2.8Linguistics
o 2.9Political science
o 2.10Psychology
o 2.11Sociology
3Additional fields of study
4Methodology
o 4.1Social research
o 4.2Theory
5Education and degrees
6Low priority of social science
7See also
o 7.1General
o 7.2Methods
o 7.3Areas
o 7.4History
o 7.5Lists
o 7.6People
o 7.7Other
8Notes
9References
10Bibliography
o 10.120th and 21st centuries sources
o 10.219th century sources
o 10.3General sources
o 10.4Academic resources
o 10.5Opponents and critics
11External links
History[edit]
Early censuses and surveys provided demographic data.
Branches[edit]
For a topical guide to this subject, see Outline of social science § Branches of social
science.
Anthropology
Area studies
Business studies
Civics
Communication studies
Criminology
Demography
Development studies
Economics
Education
Environmental studies
Folkloristics
Gender studies
Geography
History
Industrial relations
Information science
International relations
Law
Library science
Linguistics
Media studies
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[edit]
Main articles: Anthropology and Outline of 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[edit]
Main articles: Communication studies and History of 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[edit]
Main articles: Economics and Outline of 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 ends and scarce means which have 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".
Economics has two broad branches: microeconomics, where the unit of analysis is the
Buyers bargain for good prices while sellers put forth their best front in Chichicastenango Market, Guatemala.