Welcome to Sociology! Sociology is the systematic, scientific study of the patterns and
processes of social life, touching on all of its major dimensions—economic, political, religious,
familial, and criminal, to name a few—and investigating it at both the level of grand social and
historical developments, and the level of everyday, mundane interactions. It studies both
individual actors, and the informal groups and formal organizations that populate the social
landscape.
This course cannot be comprehensive in its coverage of the discipline of social science. But it
will introduce you to some basic concepts in sociological analysis, to some fundamental
arguments about the constitution of society and the individuals who comprise it, and to
important substantive topics and problems in a variety of the subfields of sociology.