Common Themes
For our immediate purposes we can note two basic themes running thorough the definitions we've just considered:
1. What sociologists study.
Sociology is the study of
the social world. It involves studying human beings and their patterns of
behaviour. In order to do this, we focus on the way people form relationships and
how these relationships, considered in their totality, are represented by
the concept of a "society".
In this respect, the focus of the sociologist’s attention is group behaviour. That is, the effect that the groups people either create / join or are born into (family, work, education and peer groups, for example) have upon people’s behaviour.
2. How sociologists study the social world.
The definitions included words like "scientific", "systematic" and "objective" - ideas that tell us something about both the way sociologists study social behaviour and the kind of knowledge they are trying to produce about social the social world and the relationships therein.