Understanding Culture, Society and Politics PDF

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Summary

Dennis Mojica is derived from two Greek words anthropos and logos, which intensively studies human and the respective cultures where they were born and actively belong to. It is considered the father or even grandfather of all social and behavioral sciences like sociology, economics and psychology, ...

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Dennis Mojica

is derived from two Greek words anthropos and logos, which intensively studies human and the respective cultures where they were born and actively belong to. It is considered the father or even grandfather of all social and behavioral sciences like sociology, economics and psychology, to name a few. The discipline had its humble beginnings with early European explorers and their accounts which produced initial impressions about the native peoples they encountered In their explorations.

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Franz Boaz, a physicist, strongly believed that the same method and strategy could be applied in measuring culture and human behavior while conducting research among humans including uniqueness of their cultures.

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Benedict became a specialist in anthropology and folklore and authored the famous book “Patterns of Culture”.

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the study of society, social institutions, and social relationships.  Sociology is interested in describing and explaining human behavior, especially as it occurs within a social context (MerriamWebster).  Studying sociology is practical and useful. A social beings, we gain understanding of how the social world operates and of our place in it.

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emerged with the two of the most significant social and political revolution in the history.  The French Revolution of 1789, along with the Industrial Revolution in England during the 18th century, tremendously changed people’s lives.

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is the person who “invented” sociology in 1842, by bringing together the Greek word socius or “companion” and the Latin word logy or “study”. He originally used “social physics” as a term for sociology. Its aim was to discover the social laws that govern the development of society. Comte suggested that there were three stages in the development of societies, namely the theological stage, the metaphysical stage, and the positive stage.

August Comte (1798-1857)

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The founding mother of sociology an English writer and reformist. In her accounts in her book How to Observe Morals and Manners (1838), the deep sociological insights we call now ethnographic narratives are fully expressed. Harriet Martineau (1802-1876)

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a German philosopher and revolutionary further contributed to the development of sociology. Marx introduced the materialist analysis of history which discounts metaphysical explanation for historical development. Before Marx, scholars explain social change through divine intervention and the theory of “great men”. Karl Marx (1818-1883)

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is the forerunner of the conflict theory. He wrote the Communist Manifesto a book that is focused on the misery of the lower class (working class) caused by the existing social order.  He reiterated that political revolution was vital in the evolutionary process of the society, the only means to achieve improvement of social conditions.

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a French sociologist who put forward the idea that individuals are more products rather than the creator of society; the society itself is external to the individual. In his book Suicide, Durkheim proved that social forces strongly impact on people’s lives and that seemingly personal event is not personal after all. Emile Durkheim’s (1864-1920)

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Weber stressed the role of rationalization in the development of society. For Weber, rationalization refers essentially to the disenchantment of the world. As science began to replace religion, people also adopted a scientific or rational attitude to the world. People refused to believe in myths and superstitious beliefs. Max Weber (1864-1920)

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Questions:  1. Why is there a need for politics?  2. Can we exist without politics?

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is part of the social sciences that deals with the study of politics, power, and government. In turn, politics refers to “ the process of making collective decisions in a community, society, or group through application of influence and power” (Ethridge and Handelman 2010, p.8).

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studies how even the most private and personal decisions of individuals are influence by collective decisions of a community. “The personal is political.”

Generally, politics is associated with how power is gained and employed to develop authority and influence on social affairs. It can also be used to promulgate guiding rules to govern the state. It is also a tactic for upholding collaboration among members of a community, whether from civil or political organizations.

Politics is allied with government which is considered as the ultimate authority. It is the primary role of the government to rule the society by stipulating and transmitting the basic laws that will supervise the freedom of the people. Each form of government possesses power to attain order that should lead toward social justice.

Science is commonly defined as the knowledge derived from experiment and observation systematically done. Policy-making and government decisions should be done through proper research, social investigation, analysis, validation, planning, execution and evaluation. Thus, politics is a science....