“Disciplines within the Social Sciences”

Anthropology

• the study of human kind, in particular

• the comparative study of human societies and cultures and their development

• the study of the ancient times with respect to society and culture. The traces of those events can be found in material remains i.e. the artifacts, burials, ruined buildings, monuments, etc. and are studied by archaeologists

• concerned with applying the principles of science to the study of social behavior in the same way the scientific principles are applied to other areas of human behavior. However before applying a scientific approach, it is necessary to understand both what constitutes a scientific explanation and what are the minimum requirements of doing science.

• Anthropology has origins in natural sciences, the humanities, and social sciences.

• The work of Franz Boas and Bronislaw Malinowski in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries—Social anthropology has been distinguished from other science disciplines by its emphasis on in-depth examination of context, cross-cultural comparisons (socio-cultural anthropology is by nature a comparative discipline), and the importance it places on long-term, experimental immersion in the area of research often known as participant-observation.

• Cultural anthropology- has emphasized cultural relativity and the use of findings to frame cultural critiques. This has been particularly prominent in the United States, from Boas’s arguments against 19 th -century racial ideology, through Margaret Mead’s advocacy for gender equality and sexual liberation, to current critisms of post colonial oppression and promotion of multiculturalism.

Four-field approaches in Anthropology:

• Biological or Physical anthropology- seeks to understand the physical human being through the study of human evolution and adaptability, population genetics, and primatology. Subfields are: Anthropometrics, forensic anthropology, osteology, and nutritional anthropology.
• Socio-cultural anthropology- is the investigation, often through long term, intensive field studies (including participant-observation methods), of the culture, and social organization of a particular people: language, economic, and political organization law and conflict resolution, patterns of consumption and exchange, kinship and family structure, gender relations, childrearing and socialization, religion, mythology, symbolism. In some European countries, socio- cultural anthropology is known as Ethnology. Subfields are: psychological anthropology, folklore, anthropology of religion, ethnic studies, cultural studies, anthropology of media and cyberspace, and study of the diffusion of social practices and cultural forms.
• Linguistic Anthropology- seeks to understand the processes of human communications, verbal and non-verbal, variation in language across time and space, the social uses of language, and the relationship between language and culture.
• Archeology- studies the contemporary distribution and form of artifacts (materials modified by past human activities), with the intent of understanding distribution and movement of ancient populations, development of human social organization, and relationships among contemporary populations.

Economics

• Branch of knowledge concerned with production, consumption, and transfer of wealth.
• The study of scarcity, the study of how people use resources or the study of decision- making.
• Involves the topic like wealth, finance, recessions, and banking, leading to misconception that economics is all about money and stock market. It helps us understand historical trends, interpret today’s headlines, and make predictions for coming decades.
• The scientific study of the ways in which humans make choices about production, consumption and wealth.

Branches of Economics:

• Microeconomics – is the study of choices by individuals. (e.g. how someone decides to budget their paycheck each month). Researchers have used the tools of microeconomics.

• to measure the link between health and economic well-being, study the impact of microloans in poor countries, and understand why people never seem to save as much for retirement as they would like.

• Macroeconomics- the study of governments, industries, central banking, and boom and bust of the business cycle. It helps us answer some biggest questions about how and why recessions occur, how surges in migration or gas price will affect the economy, or what are the aging of the Baby Boomer generation could do to the national debt.

Geography

• The study of places and the relationship between people and their environments. Geographers explore both physical properties of Earth’s surface and the human societies spread across it.
• The study of the earth’s landscapes, people, places and environment. In simple terms, it knows about the world in which we live. Geography is unique in bridging the social sciences (human geography) with the natural sciences (physical geography).
• Includes the land, weather, economic structure and culture of the world. (e.g. Clothing style- are determined by geography because geographical location determines the temperature, climate and available materials for textiles.

History

• The study of past events, particularly in human affairs.
• History is a story about the past that is significant and true.
• It is a field of research which uses a narrative to examine and analyze the sequence of events and it sometimes attempts to investigate objectively the patterns of cause and effect that determine events Historians debate the nature of history and its usefulness (Evans, Richard J.2001).

Linguistics

• The scientific study of language and its structure, including the study of morphology, syntax, phonetics, and semantics.
• Its focus is about the structure, use and psychology of language in general.
• Concerned with the nature of language and communication; deals also with the study of particular languages; includes explorations into the nature of language variation(i.e., dialects), language changes over time, how language is processed and stored in the brain, and how it acquired by young children.

Political Science

• The branch of knowledge that deals with system of government; the analysis of political activity and behavior.
• The study of state, government and politics and this study must be based on scientific principles and reasons.
• Concerned with the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behavior.

Psychology

• The scientific study of behavior and mental processes.
• Goals of psychology are to describe, explain, predict, and control the events it studies. Psychology thus seeks to describe, explain, predict, and control behavior and mental processes.
• Brain Science and Cognitive psychology- is the study how the human mind thinks, remembers and learns. Psychologists apply the psychological science to understand how human makes decisions and perceive our world.
• Climate and Environmental Psychology- psychologists use psychological science to improve the interactions of people with the world around us.

Sociology

• Is the study of the development, structure, and functioning of human society.
• Sociology focuses on the study of human groups. Sociology comes from the Latin word ‘sociologie’. It literally means the study of companion.
• Sociology seeks to understand the structure of a society and how it works. It also seeks to define and understand the different factors that have shaped our society. This includes race, class, gender, culture, religion, belief systems and government.
• Studies the way individual and group behaviors impact on the running of our society.

Demographics

• Is the study of statistics such as births, deaths, income, or the incidence of disease, which illustrates the changing structure of human populations.