BLOG 1. WHAT IS SOCIOLOGY? AND BEING A SOCIOLOGIST

Sept 8th 

Angela Wibowo (9367820180)

Summary :

In my opinion, when we’re talking about sociology, we’re talking about social life. In Latin, sociology is divided by 2 words, socius and logos. Socius means companion, social, and logos means the study. Sociology is about learning social life in wider coverage, because it is about people’s response, and analyze the community dynamics. For example, in a Country suddenly the government announce a rule about to lift the price of fuel, and then the people in that country will have to pay more, and more expenses that they have to paid, or like they have to work harder than before to earn money, or maybe some people will get disadvantages from this rule. In my opinion, there is a social change, because of the expensive fuel price makes people’s life change in that country. As a sociologist we observe and analyze about social phenomena, and it may be followed by culture, religions, and others. I think that is what sociologist do, they analyze about what happened in people’s life, and the dynamics of the people, and in sociology, we have to search about the reason why something happened, why people doing this or that, the reason why something is happening, and others. In sociology, we have to see what happened around us with empirical and objective way.

There are so many definitions of sociology, so we have to do operationalization to deal with it. Operationalization makes it more specific and measurable, because there are so many concepts about sociology, so we have to make it more specific so we will know the contex about what we want to analyze. For example, wealth, we can operazionalized it with a measurable definition, such as a people who can earn money more than 100 dollars, and others.

2. What was interesting/what did you learn :

            After I read the articles, now I learned that sociology is not just talking about human interaction with other people, but I learned about how something makes a bigger change in people’s life, and the way how they’re response of something is different based on their culture, gender, religion, and others, and I think this is interesting.  

3. Discussion Point :

            I have a question after I read the articles. Sociologist can do some observing and analyze data about social interaction and social life in peoples, I have a curiosity about Is sociologist has an important role in government’s rule?

Sociological Methods and Theory / Week 2 / Kiara Juliane Annisa

1.     Summary :

Based of the materials I’ve read, in sociology study there are many theories that sociologist has developed in order to explain a social phenomena. Theory itself is an explanation about how things happened. Why theory is so important? Data alone is not prominent to explain how a phenomenon could happened, that is why we need theory to help explain the data that we already gathered in order to solve or get a better understanding about an event that occurs in a society.

            There are so many theories in sociology such as structural functionalism that explain about how and why the society function the way it is by seeing the relationship between various social institutions. Conflict theory, a theory that see a society as a place of competition. Symbolic interactionism, a theory which made to understand the relationship between human and society. Until the newest one which is a feminist theory. 

            Other than theories there are also methods that used by sociologist to measure data in order to understand a social phenomena. One of the methods that used in sociology is scientific methods that includes characterization, hypothesis development, prediction, testing, and evaluation.

2.     What was interesting/what did you learn :

While reading about the materials, I found that there are so many theories and methods that is used in sociology studies. And I was quite surprised to see a feminist theory that turns out also used by the sociologist, as I was also aware that this is one of the issue that many people paid attention to. But it’s still amaze me how the sociologist actually make and use a theory about it

3.     Discussion point :

While reading the articles I found that there are so many theories that can be used in the sociology area. But I’m curious which theory that can be used in the modern society to describe an event? For example like a me too and times up movement but other than feminist theory?

What is Sociology and Being a Sociologist / Week 1 / Kiara Juliane Annisa

1. Summary:

Based on the materials I have read sociology is a study that talking about human relationship in society. For example like how a human can enter a society and how they can communicate within the groups to build a relationship. Sociology also talk about how a human can function in a society, and what role that they have to do in order for them to merge in to this one big group called society. Not only talking about relationship and function between human, sociology also looks deeper into an Individu personal matters, religion, race, social class, gender, and also culture. This is one of the way of sociology to get a better understanding about human action. Sociology have a goals to apply the knowledge they already gathered to benefit the general social welfare and to improve the society.

Based on the subject matters, sociology ranges from the micro level to the macro level. The micro level of sociology is talking about the small part of interaction in society, such as people face to face interactions. While the macro level of sociology talks about a wider range of interaction of human in society, it involves the study of widespread social processes.

In sociology there are also a varied ways for sociologist to gather and analyze data such as observing, surveys, historical documents, census data, interview, and experiment. Based on the data that they already get and analyze a sociologist can carefully examine and get an evidence about an issue that is occurring in the society. This data then would be used for a sociologist to get an understanding of that issue, they can also informs it to the politician, educators, organization, etc. 

2. What was interesting/what did you learn:

While I was reading an articles about what is sociology, I found out that in this modern era sociology is not only focused on the traditional things like social stratification, social class, religion, secularization, law, sexuality, and gender but also expanded to focus on other things such as health, economy, and internet. I really found this interesting because based on what I learned back then I only heard sociology talking about the traditional things. As the world is getting more and more globalize and open, I found this really fascinating how one study can expand and explain a wide range of issue.

3. Discussion Point :

After reading a few articles to get a better understanding about sociology, I stumbled upon some things that makes me curious. If a sociologist give a data to, just say, a politicians or organization, it means that not only they can use it for a positive things but also a negative things to the society, does this means that sociology is also dangerous for a society? And what impact can that data could make?

Sociological Methods and Theory / Week 2 / Cindy Paskalina Kweesar

Summary:

As Aguste Comte wants, sociology has scientific methods used to understand and predict an event. As I discussed earlier in my previous blog post, sociologists always view an event from a different perspective and continue to question it. To get things that can be considered valid, they must use methods that are acknowledged as true. This includes determining the type of approach, making hypotheses and deductions, conducting experiments and evaluations and finally drawing conclusions from the results of the research that has been done.

Although it almost looks the same as science studies, research in social studies (sociology) has several obstacles that are difficult to avoid. For example, humans as the main subject of sociology are very complex creatures. Unlike testing the thickness of a steel, sociological research cannot be done by just “putting humans” in the lab. This will only eliminate the factors that influence and are very important to be taken into account in a study.

Besides that, another problem is how the subjectivity of the researcher can influence the validity of the results of the research conducted. Every researcher has an opinion, and ignoring the opinion of the researcher in the factors that influence the results of the research will become very ignorant.

Besides methodology, the important thing of a research is theory. According to Hedriksen (1992), the notion of theory is an arrangement of hypotheses, concepts, and pragmatic principles that form the general framework of reference for a questionable field. Theory consists of two components, the data and the proposed relationship. Without these two things, a theory would not be recognized as the truth.

In sociology, there are several prominent theories, including Conflict Theory, Symbolic Interactionism, Role Theory, Feminist Theory, and many more. These theories are considered good in resolving a social event that is happening. But this does not rule out the possibility of challenging these theories.

What was interesting/what did you learn

Feminist theory is not about focusing on women or even making women feel superior to men. This theory will only provide equal opportunities for women and men to see a social event. It is very interesting to know although women were often eliminated from the making of a theory, figures such as Dorothy E. Smith, Myra Marx Ferree, Joan Acker, and many more opened the opportunity for female sociologists to work in this field. The liberal Feminist Theory states that not only women but men are also harmed by society because they have to meet certain expectations. I strongly agree, because this kind of limitation, will greatly limit the freedom that everyone should have.

Discussion Point

Humans are very complex creatures, the experiences they experience greatly influence the decisions taken in the present. How does a sociologist observe subjects who are influenced by experiences that cannot be observed right away and still retain the truth of their research results?

What is sociology and Being a Sociologist / Week 1 / Cindy Paskalina Kweesar

Summary

First recoined by Aguste Comte on 1883, Sociology continues to develop until now and has a lot of variety of true definitions. In general, sociology is the study of society. But what is society? Based on Oxford Dictionary, Society can be described as “The community of people living in a particular country or region and having shared customs, laws, and organizations”. This definition means Sociology have a lot of broad topics to learns. Sociologist learn everything from politics, culture until your music decision.

Studying sociology as a human being will be an advantage as we become one step ahead to understand life. Start from asking “Why” and “How”, sociologist is trying to understand the social patterns that occur in society. Finally those pattern will be used to predict events that will occur and maybe prevent bad things in the future.

To be able to get a good answer from "Why" and "How", I found that a sociologist is in dire need of an ability to have a sociological perspective (https://youtu.be/YnCJU6PaCio). Sociological perspective required us to seeing both “the general in the particular” and “seeing the strange in the familiar”.

General in particular means we have to take a moment and think an event in a wider context. For example, Sociologist doesn’t only learn about our decisions of politics, but they also learn about how a lot of factors like gender, religion, race, etc. heavily influenced our decisions.

Next, “seeing the strange in the familiar”. We always see events happens as it is supposed to happens. We never questions everything, since we always live in this certain way. But on the other way, sociologist have to exit this views and try to see everything objectively. See everything as a strange things, so it will easy to question everything.

What was interesting/what did you learn

Interestingly because of its broad topic, understanding the world through the world of sociology open up our way to study other studies. Sociology topics like race, social class, and organization become a great foundation for studying business, Medical, Psychology, and many more.

Discussion Point

On one of the Week 1 reading, it said that most students (between 80% and 92%) were still dissatisfied about the information about this field study. These statistics concern me, because after a lot of developments happened in sociology studies, it is kind a regretful that most of the student do not get what they expected to. So as a one of the sociology students, what can we do to improve sociology learning resources and more importantly to popularize this study area in the future?