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Social science is the field of scholarship that studies society.[1] "Social science"
is commonly used as an umbrella term to refer to a plurality of fields outside of
the natural sciences usually exclusive of the administrative or managerial sciences.
These may include: anthropology, archaeology, business administration, communication,
criminology, economics, education, government, linguistics, international relations,
political science, sociology and, in some contexts, geography, history, law, and
psychology.[2][3] The term may be used, however, in the specific context of referring
to the original science of society established in 19th century sociology. Émile
Durkheim, Karl Marx and Max Weber are typically cited as the principal architects
of modern social science by this definition.[4] 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 the quantitative and qualitative techniques). The term
social research has also acquired a degree of autonomy as practitioners from various
disciplines share in its aims and methods.
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Part of a series on Science
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Social science history
Main articles: History of the social sciences and History of sociology
The history of the social sciences begins in the roots of ancient philosophy. In
Ancient history, there was no difference between mathematics and the study of history,
poetry or politics. This unity of science as descriptive remains and deductive reasoning
from axioms created a scientific framework.
The Age of Enlightenment saw a revolution within natural philosophy, changing the
basic framework by which individuals understood what was scientific. In some quarters,
the accelerating trend of mathematical studies presumed a reality independent of
the observer and worked by its own rules. Social sciences came forth from the moral
philosophy of the time and was influenced by the Age of Revolutions, such as the
Industrial revolution and the French revolution. 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.
The beginnings of the social sciences in the 18th century are reflected in various
grand encyclopedia of Diderot, with articles from 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.Social
science was influenced by positivism, focusing on knowledge based on actual positive
sense experience and avoiding the negative; metaphysical speculation was avoided.
Auguste Comte used the term "science social" to describe the field, taken from the
ideas of Charles Fourier; Comte also referred to the field as social physics.
Following this period, there were five paths of development that sprang forth in
the Social Sciences, influenced by Comte or other fields. 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 the social phenomena was 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 on this distinction. In this
route, theory (description) and prescription were non-overlapping formal discussions
of a subject.
Around the turn 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. Conversely, the interdisciplinary
and cross-disciplinary nature of scientific inquiry into human behavior and social
and environmental factors affecting it made many of the natural sciences interested
in some aspects of social science methodology. 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. Researchers continues 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 which, with considerable success, continue
to provide usable frameworks for massive, growing data banks; for more, see consilience.
At present though, the various realms of social science progress in a myriad of
ways, increasing the overall knowledge of society. 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.
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.
At the turn of the 21st century, the expanding domain of economics in the social
sciences has been described as economic imperialism.
Branches of social science
Social Science areas
The following are problem areas and discipline branches within the social sciences.
• Anthropology
• Business studies
• Communication studies
• Criminology
• Demography
• Development studies
• Economics
• Education
• Geography
• History
• Industrial relations
• Law
• Linguistics
• Media studies
• Methodology
• Philosophy
• Political science
• Psychology
• Public administration
• Sociology
• Legal Management
• Paralegal studies
• International studies
• Library Science
• Information Science
The Social Science disciplines are branches of knowledge which are 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. 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
(άνθρωπος) is from the Greek for "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."[12] 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. 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.
Economics
Economics is a social science that seeks to analyze and describe the production,
distribution, and consumption of wealth. The word "economics" is from the 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 university 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."
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 exchange of value, and that labor (human
effort) is the source of all value.
The expanding domain of economics in the social sciences has been described as economic
imperialism.
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Education
article: Education 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.
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.
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A depiction of Europe's oldest university,
the University of Bologna, Italy
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Geography
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. The latter examines the natural environment and how
the climate, vegetation & life, soil, water and landforms are produced and interact.
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.
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).
The field of geography is generally split into two distinct branches: physical and
human. Physical geography examines phenomena related to climate, oceans, soils,
and the measurement of earth. Human geography focuses on fields as diverse as Cultural
geography, transportation, health, military operations, and cities. Other branches
of geography include Social geography, regional geography, geomatics, and environmental
geography.
History
History is the continuous, systematic narrative and research into past human events
as interpreted through historiographical paradigms or theories, such as the Turner
Thesis about the American frontier.
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 a Humanities (as it does for applied Linguistics). However the National Research
Council classifies History as a Social science. 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.
Law
Law in common parlance, means a rule which (unlike a rule of ethics) is capable
of enforcement through institutions. 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", as an "interpretive
concept" to achieve justice, as an "authority" to mediate people's interests, and
even as "the command of a sovereign, backed by the threat of a sanction". 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
sciences and humanity. 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[28] and the adjective legal comes from the Latin word lex.
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
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 positive
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
behavior, public law, judicial behavior, 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. 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 behavioralism, 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 journal articles
are used in building and testing theories. Empirical methods include survey research,
statistical analysis/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.
Public administration
One of the main branches of political science, public administration 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 historically
referred to as government management, it increasingly encompasses non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) that also operate with a similar, primary dedication to the
betterment of humanity.
Differentiating public administration from business administration, a closely related
field, has become a popular method for defining the discipline by contrasting the
two. First, the goals of public administration are more closely related to those
often cited as goals of the American founders and democratic people in general.[citation
needed][dubious – discuss] That is, public employees work to improve equality, justice,
security, efficiency, effectiveness, and, at times, for profit.[citation needed]
These values help to both differentiate the field from business administration,
primarily concerned with profit, and define the discipline. Second, public administration
is a relatively new, multidisciplinary field. Woodrow Wilson's The Study of Administration
is frequently cited as the seminal work. Wilson advocated a more professional operation
of public officials' daily activities. Further, the future president identified
the necessity in the United States of a separation between party politics and good
bureaucracy, which has also been a lasting theme.
The multidisciplinary nature of public administration is related to a third defining
feature: administrative duties. Public administrators work in public agencies, at
all levels of government, and perform a wide range of tasks. Public administrators
collect and analyze data (statistics), monitor fiscal operations (budgets, accounts,
and cash flow), organize large events and meetings, draft legislation, develop policy,
and frequently execute legally mandated, government activities. Regarding this final
facet, public administrators find themselves serving as parole officers, secretaries,
note takers, paperwork processors, record keepers, notaries of the public, cashiers,
and managers. Indeed, the discipline couples well with many vocational fields such
as information technology, finance, law, and engineering. When it comes to the delivery
and evaluation of public services, a public administrator is undoubtedly involved.
Psychology
Psychology is an academic and applied field involving the study of behavior 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.
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
behavior. 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 behavior,
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, Industrial-Organizational Psychology, Mathematical psychology,
Neuropsychology, and Quantitative Analysis of Behaviour to name only a few. The
word psychology comes from the ancient Greek ψυχή, psyche ("soul", "mind") and logy,
study).
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 specialised in heavily science based modules,
then they will still generally be awarded the B.A.
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Sociology
Sociology is the systematic study of society and human social action. The meaning
of the word comes from the suffix "-ology" which means "study of," derived from
Greek, and the stem "soci-" which is from the Latin word socius, meaning "companion",
or society in general.
Sociology was originally established by Auguste Comte (1798–1857) in 1838. 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 amongst Catholic and Protestant
populations, distinguished sociological analysis from psychology or philosophy.
Karl Marx rejected Comtean positivism but nevertheless aimed to establish a science
of society based on historical materialism, becoming recognised as a founding figure
of sociology posthumously as the term gained broader meaning. At the turn of the
20th century, the first wave of German sociologists, including Max Weber and Georg
Simmel, developed sociological antipositivism. The field may be broadly recognised
as an amalgam of three modes of social thought in particular: Durkheimian positivism
and structural functionalism; Marxist historical materialism and conflict theory;
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.
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Émile Durkheim is considered one
of the founding fathers of sociology.
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Sociology evolved as an academic response to the challenges of modernity, such as
industrialization, urbanization, secularization, and a perceived process of enveloping
rationalization. Because sociology is such a broad discipline, it can be difficult
to define, even for professional sociologists. 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 behavior 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. Sociologists use a diversity of research
methods, drawing upon either empirical techniques or critical theory. 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 non-academic purposes. 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. New sociological
sub-fields continue to appear - such as community studies, computational sociology,
environmental sociology, network analysis, actor-network theory and a growing list,
many of which are cross-disciplinary in nature.
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