General Studying in Sociology no comments
In my last week post the brief issues were given and the disciplines for this research were economics and sociology. However, it is quite hard to find the connection directly between the Web and those disciplines, as those disciplines are all at the basic level to deal with the real world matters. Additionally, the Web is still in its young age with changing on and on. Therefore, in order to address the issue that how to find out the value of user-generated content, the basic theory should be understood firstly and independently.
The main purpose of this week reading is to understand the general theory in sociology. Firstly, what is sociology? According to Tony, sociology is ’the academic study of the relationships which develop between human beings as they organise themselves and are organised by others in societies’. The sociology will tend to deal with the problems which have developed in an especially acute form in modern times. These problems are caused by all the changes within societies. The disruption of traditional communities can be used as one example.
Secondly, it is about the ways of studying sociology. There are five approaches to sociological theory. They are constructionism, functionalism, utilitarianism, critical structuralism and feminism. The following grid shows the gerenal differences between them,
Subjective Objective
Individualistic Constructionism Utilitarianism
Holistic Functionalism Critical structuralism
In China, the famous approach to sociological theory is the critical structuralism which is developed mainly by Karl Marx who was a great political economist as well. The Marxism gives the relationship between sociology and economics which shows that the social relation will be alternative with the development of the society.
For the further study, I will put the focus on the individual behaviour in the society and also begin to study the economics aspect which can be connected with the macro-sociology studying.