THE SOCIAL

SCIENCES:
SOCIOLOGY,
ANTHROPOLOG
Y, AND
POLITICAL
SCIENCE
LESSON 2
 PHOTO ESSAY

PHOTO ESSAY:

Does the scene below

qualify as a form of
Social Engagement?
Why or why not?
 REFLECTION

If you want to see change in your community, what do you think

are the necessary steps that you need to do in order to start or
create change?

Find your pair and share it to the class.

 THE SOCIAL AS “DRIVER OF
INTERACTION”
Society is a broad term that refers to a group of individuals who
live together in a specific geographic area and share a common
culture, norms, values and institutions.
The study of society can be accomplished in three different ways:

a. By mapping the social forces impinging on social actors as

their lives intersect in society;
b. By rehearsing the structures and components of cultural
practices and traditions and;
c. By exposing the asymmetrical power distributions among
members of social communities and organizations
These attempts – different and unique in their basic assumptions
about what makes society possible and the network of
relationships that define and constitutes it –are made due to
common concern: to understand the dynamics of social
interactions in society.
If the perspective highlights the external influences that facilitate or
constrain human actions, the discipline is called “SOCIOLOGY”.

If the perspective underlines the role of cultural structures in

organizing human interactions, the discipline is referred to as
“ANTHROPOLOGY”.

And if the perspective zeroes in on power relations and how these

produce layered modalities of opportunities among social actions
the discipline is called “POLITICAL SCIENCE”
 A. SOCIOLOGY

Sociology focuses on the ubiquity (or the everywhere-ness) of

social forces in unlikely forms: sex, gender, religion, class, race,
ethnicity, sexual orientation, and the like.

Social forces represent a constellation of unseen yet powerful

forces influencing the behavior of individuals and institutions.
Social forces can be interpreted as any human-created way of
doing things that influence, pressure, or force people to behave,
interact with others, and think in certain ways.

Social forces are normally in the guise of rules (written and

unwritten), norms, and expectations. The influence of these three
is normally taken for granted and assumed to be natural.
C. Wright Mills (1959), and American social critic, argued that individuals
can still transcend the limitations posed by their respective social
locations.
They can do this by imagining the intersections of their life situations (or
individuals biographies) and the events of their societies (or history).

This state of mind, which Mills termed “Sociological imaginations”,

allows social actors to discern opportunities where there is none by
converting their personal troubles into public issues.
 A QUICK HISTORY OF SOCIOLOGY
Sociology was born in Europe (Germany, England and France) during the
period of Industrial Revolution.
It was characterized by the use of the Steam power, the growth of factories,
and the mass production of manufactured goods.
The first set of Sociologists starting with;
• August Comte (1798-1857) father of discipline coined the term Sociology
• Karl Marx (1818-1883)
• Emile Durkheim (1857-1977) a French Sociologist
• Max Weber (18640-1920) the first to raise the critical questions about
deluge of changes about by the mushrooming factories
DURKHEIM, a French social thinker, was exceptionally
instrumental in the formalization and late recognition of
sociology as the new science of the study of society.
His landmark study of SUICIDE enabled him to concretize the
“niche problematique”of sociology, apart and different from that
of anthropology, psychology, philosophy, religion, and literature.
Social Fact is another name for social phenomenon. It has
distinctive characteristics and determinants which are capable of
holding an external constraint on the individual.

Social Fact according to Durkheim, was a characteristic feature

of the power of ideas to create social realities for members of
society.
 B. ANTHROPOLOGY
The American Anthropological Association describes
anthropology as a science seeking to “Uncover principles of
behavior that apply to all human communities”.
“To an anthropologist, diversity itself –seen in body shapes, and
sizes, customs, clothing, speech, religion, and worldview –
provides aa frame of reference for understanding any single
aspect of life in given community.
Anthropologists are looking for “culture universal “, patterns of
similarity within an array of differences. This approach is
faithful to be the principle of “equal but different” enshrined in
the motto of the discipline.

Anthropology focuses on human diversity around the world.

 THE SOCIAL IN THE GUISE OF
INEQUALITY
Social diversity is an ever-present and enduring feature of all
known cultures around the world, from the most primitive to the
most highly urbanized.

Social Inequality – occurs when resources in a given society are

distributed unevenly, typically through norms of allocation that
engender specific patterns along the lines of socially defined
categories of persons.
Seen as modality (or forms) of social inequality, cultural
diversity and social diversity have been the perennial subjects of
theoretical musings of sociologists, anthropologists, and political
scientists:

SOCIOLOGISTS attributed the persistence and omnipresence

of social inequality to the beneficial functions it provides for
the overall operation of society.
POLITICAL SCIENTISTS, explain social inequality as a
product of an asymmetrical distribution of power in society.

ANTHROPOLOGISTS take account of the “equal but

different ways” of how people live in the world.
 AN UNOFFICIAL STORY OF
ANTHROPOLOGY
Anthropology has been pejoratively called “ a child of
colonization” because discoverers of new territories were always
accompanied by the missionary documents.

This somewhat informal story of anthropology suggests two

essential things about the discipline and its capacity to represent
the social:
1. Its “methodology” of documenting one’s engagement with a
different culture, and
2. Its fascination with the ways of life in different societies. The
former is referred to in anthropological jargon as the
“ethnographic method” (ethnography).
Ethnography can either be a research design or a specific
research method where people are observed in their natural
environment rather than in formal research setting.
 FORMS OF DIVERSITY: SOCIAL
AND CULTURAL
Cultural Diversity means a range of different societies or people
of different origins, religions, and traditions all living and
interacting together.

Social Diversity refers to the gasps between people as measured

by the presence or absence of certain socially desirable traits.
 C. POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Political Science is the systematic study of government and
politics. It makes generalizations and analyses about political
systems and political behavior and uses these results to predict
future behavior.
• Political Science includes the study of political philosophy,
ethics, international relations, foreign policy, public
administration, and the dynamic relations between different
parts of governments.
• In its most generic sense, political science assumes the
asymmetrical power relations of members of society but
problematizes the unjust and unfair effects of such relations
manifested in matters related to governance.
• Power relations are forms of interaction meditated by the use
and deployment of authority and political influence.
 THE SOCIAL AS A TOOL OF CHANGE
• Social Change is used to indicate the changes that place in
human interactions and interrelations.
• Social Change may be defined as the alteration of mechanisms
within the social structure, characterized by the changes in
cultural symbols, rules and behavior, social organizations, or
value systems.
• Society is a web of social relationships and hence, social
change means change in the systems of social relationships.
• Tis is understood in terms of social processes, social
interactions, and social organizations.
• Sociology is both the consequences and the cause of change
given its historical development as a result of wide-ranging
changes in Europe from the Renaissance and Industrial
Revolution periods.
 THE STORY OF POLITICAL
SCIENCE: A CRIB VERSION
• POLITICAL SCIENCE is the discipline that problematizes the
nature of power and studies how possession and exercise of
power can shape individual actions and collective decisions
for that matter. The latter are, in essence, a from of “social
agreement” because they have futuristic and lasting effects in
people’s collective lives.
• The discipline was traditionally believed to have emerged from
the works of “social contract” theorists.
• The first political task that confronted political theorists was the
establishment of a political community that would protect the collective
good, which is context was born out of that Social Contract.
• A second task became necessary due to failure of the social contract,
seen in failed states or in state of crisis. It is here where legitimacy,
reform, and resistance/revolution emerge. The focus is on how to keep
each party fulfilling its side of the contract.
• A third task became more evident during the period of modernity. This
is due to the fact that in desire to establish order, that much focus was
given on the political collective. The individual, which Aristotle
considered as a “political animal” disappeared as focus. It is well-
documented that the desire to establish a political community took its
toll on individual rights.
• The third and final task of political science aimed at bringing back the
individual to political domain, focusing on what has been labeled as
“identity politics” that celebrated the saying “the personal is also
political”
 ANSWER THE GUIDE QUESTIONS TO
EVALUATE YOUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE
LESSON
1. How do Social Forces influence the life chances of the
members of society?
2. In what ways can social actors benefit from the operations of
these social forces?
3. Which among the social forces are sociological, cultural and
political?