Does Sociology Exist?

If sociology does not exist then there would be no institutions that would be protecting peoples rights and people would not have to abide by any particular conduct. Murder would be rampant and there would be no defending your rights for self-defense instead of just accepting your own doom. The anti-sociologist will argue that there are just people and their families but the people and their families are products of certain cultures, which owe their existence to social norms many of which are traditional.

Thatcher was quoted as saying that sociology does not exist but indeed it is still being taught at universities and colleges to the tune of getting people to understands what shapes society, why we act the way we do at given moments in our history and where we are headed. Perhaps it all began in an effort to understand the transition mankind made from being agrarian to becoming industrialized. There were and are different theorists each with their own few on what sociology comprises when it could very well be a conglomeration of all those things and more.

Society is on the move still and so is sociology on which it is based. Man is an individual but even in the UK, if he pays taxes he does so to contribute to the common good of the general population through the social services that the country provides. To have those social services means that sociological elements are at work, people work collectively even when they are individuals.

Societies have not stopped since the time that Plato wanted to define it. It has become a key element of humanity faculties and can be appreciated for its fact as well as for its abstractions. People wanted to understand it in order to reconstruct it and they wanted to understand it to build over it or around it. It helps to understand political, economical and social forces at play when discussing this study because we are living in post-industrialist times.

We are even living through a new revolution brought on by the new wave of media, a new way that information has been handed down to us, through the internet, social chat lines, interactive websites and the like. There are critics who will call that just a distraction, an electronic form of what was. that information has always been and will always be, ever since people carved hieroglyphics or obscure symbols, or kept note of how many many animals they hunted. It is not so much the way that information is packaged, processed and passed on that would interest the sociologist but the reason for the need to reach wider audiences, spread knowledge worldwide and collect data internationally.

Some may argue that we are living in post-communist times, since the fall of the iron curtain but there are still some communist states around, so if this is post-communist times it is not universal. We have entered into a period where sociology has become more complex as we deal with gender related issues, feminism, minority issues and rights, the media and how it effects society, socialized medicine and its place today in contemporary society. Societies have developed, which shelter productive and unproductive elements that act together or in opposition.

There are dictionaries out that define many elements that sociologists discuss and those would be advisable for readers who want to get a clearer view of what sociology is.