Importance of Sociology

Sociology has proved its utility in many ways from locating social problems to scientific study of problem and more.

Sociology has proved its utility in many ways, discussed as under:

Locating Social Problems. The human association is where, there will be a problem. How to locate the problem is the responsibility of the sociologist. They bring the attention of the people toward the problem. They also differentiate between the more and less severe problems.

Scientific Study of Problem. The sociologists are trend in using the scientific methods. They study the problems scientifically and make their solution possible with the help of sociological knowledge.

Solution of Problems. If the problems are located and scientifically studied then their solution is possible, because of the cause and effect study. Through sociological study the cause of the problems are found out and also their effects on the society. Then the remedial measures are easy to be given.

Reconstruction. Today every society is engaged in economic as well as political reconstruction. It is continues process, but impossible without social reconstruction. Therefore we can say that sociology helps in political and economic reconstruction.

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« Sociology as a Scientific DisciplinePure and Applied Sociology »Preserve and Growth of Culture. The sociologists collect information about their culture. They transmit it to others. They as teachers are doing the same job. The sociologists also write books etc. to preserve the cultural heritage. So they preserve and give growth to the culture in different ways i.e. writing about culture and to teach it to the students in the subject of sociology.

It has been concluded that the sociologists get knowledge about society and culture. They transmit it to others. They as teachers are doing the same job. The sociologists also write books etc. to preserve the cultural heritage. So they preserve and given growth to the culture in different ways i.e. writing about culture and to teach it to the students in the subject of sociology. It has been concluded that the sociologists get knowledge about society and culture and then apply that knowledge to solve the problems and to develop the society and to preserve their culture.

Helps in Assessment of Resources. Today is every advanced state stress laid on Planning? It is believed that without planning it is like duping in the dark. One of the’ essential features of planning is to have proper assessment of human resources and ideas about the extent of social problems and magnitude of labor involved in solving them. Planning is therefore required not only to have proper assessment of means and ends but also anticipation of results. This important job of studying social problems in society is done by Sociology alone.

Helps in Conciliation. Society is essentially homogeneity and it is in diversity that society develops and progresses, but this diversity ha its own problems as well. In a diverse society the propose have different food, clothing and social habits. The people in such a society have mutual agreements and disagreements as well. Such a society can grow if the people belonging to different communities, castes and classes understand customs, fashions, and culture as well as civilization of others. This work is done in society by a sociologist who provides data, observations and conclusions, which help in toleration and conciliation.

Helps in the Growth of Democracy. A sociologist helps in strengthening and developing society. As we are aware that every society suffers from certain maladies and such evils as prejudices, selfishness and as such it is essential that there should be scientific approach to these problems. It falls upon the sociologists to analyze these problems so that democracy is strengthened from the very foundations.

Comparative Study of Institutions. In each society there are many institutions, which help in smooth running of society. All such institutions are not equally important and are also not equally acceptable to the society Sociology helps in conducting a comparative study of all such institutions and thus makes us knows about their comparative importance and utility.

Comparative Study of Societies. There are society’s spreads all over the world, which have different cultures and civilizations. It is essential to have their comparative study both for the sake of development, progress and growth. Such a comparative study can become possible only with the help of Sociology Thus sociology helps us in comparative study of societies of true world

Caste is closely connected with the Hindu philosophy and religion, custom and tradition .It is believed to have had a divine origin and sanction. It is deeply rooted social institution in India. There are more than 2800 castes and sub-castes with all their peculiarities. The term caste is derived from the Spanish word caste meaning breed or lineage. The word caste also signifies race or kind. The Sanskrit word for caste is varna which means colour.The caste stratification of the Indian society had its origin in the chaturvarna system. According to this doctrine the Hindu society was divided into four main varnas - Brahmins, Kashtriyas, Vaishyas and Shudras.The Varna system prevalent during the Vedic period was mainly based on division of labour and occupation. The caste system owns its origin to the Varna system. Ghurye says any attempt to define caste is bound to fail because of the complexity of the phenomenon.
According to Risely caste is a collection of families bearing a common name claiming a common descent from a mythical ancestor professing to follow the same hereditary calling and regarded by those who are competent to give an opinion as forming a single homogeneous community. According to Maclver and Page when status is wholly predetermined so that men are born to their lot without any hope of changing it, then the class takes the extreme form of caste. Cooley says that when a class is somewhat strictly hereditary we may call it caste.M.N Srinivas sees caste as a segmentary system. Every caste for him divided into sub castes which are the units of endogamy whose members follow a common occupation, social and ritual life and common culture and whose members are governed by the same authoritative body viz the panchayat.According to Bailey caste groups are united into a system through two principles of segregation and hierarchy. For Dumont caste is not a form of stratification but as a special form of inequality. The major attributes of caste are the hierarchy, the separation and the division of labour.Weber sees caste as the enhancement and transformation of social distance into religious or strictly a magical principle. For Adrian Mayer caste hierarchy is not just determined by economic and political factors although these are important.

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Social mobility is the movement of individuals, families and groups from one social position to another. The theory of social mobility attempts to explain the frequency of these movements, and the ways people became distributed into various social positions (social selection). Social mobility is the movement of individuals, families and groups from one social position to another. The theory of social mobility attempts to explain the frequency of these movements, and the ways people became distributed into various social positions (social selection). Two Types of Mobility

Sociologists usually distinguish "structural mobility" (all people are doing better than they used to, or better than their parents did) from "exchange mobility" (some people are changing their positions relative to others). In the 20th century, structural mobility has increased in Canada, the US, Britain and other industrialized countries, but exchange mobility has changed very little.

Changes in Structural Mobility
With industrialization, agricultural labour declined and labour in factories and offices increased. As certain jobs become more common, the opportunity to enter these jobs (as compared to other jobs) increases. Thus, mobility into growing sectors of the economy outstrips mobility into declining sectors. This is one kind of structural mobility. At the same time, the opportunity to enter a job is greatest when competition for the job is least. As the number of competitors decreases, the amount of mobility increases: this is the other kind of structural mobility.

Rates of structural mobility are thus determined by both the number of jobs and the number of competitors for these jobs. When the economy booms, UNEMPLOYMENT declines, new jobs are created and old jobs are often improved. Higher salaries and benefits are paid to attract the best workers. In times of economic stagnation, few new jobs are available, upgrading is less frequent and mobility decelerates. This boom-and-bust cycle is particularly evident in Canada. Because the economy is largely owned by foreign investors (see FOREIGN INVESTMENT) and dominated by the export of raw resources to foreign consumers, Canada is particularly susceptible to fluctuations in foreign economies. Economic growth and technological change are also largely determined by outside forces.

Generally, the size of the LABOUR FORCE and competition for jobs within it is determined by natural population growth, the migration of workers and change in the rates of adult participation. During the GREAT DEPRESSION, birthrates fell dramatically, but afterward, particularly between 1946 and 1962, birthrates rose to very high levels. The BABY BOOM generation crowded schools in the 1950s, universities in the 1960s and the market for entry-level jobs during the 1970s. Since the baby boom, birthrates have fallen once again, although some observers believe 40-year cycles of strong and weak competition will result from future demographic booms and busts.

Since the Depression, IMMIGRATION into Canada has remained consistently high. The Canadian government has generally encouraged the immigration of workers who will accept jobs that native-born Canadians will not or cannot do; therefore, a rise in immigration rates does not necessarily indicate increased competition for all jobs. In the mid-1960s the altered immigration laws favoured those with more education, resulting in an increase of urban, educated migrants who competed successfully for white-collar jobs. In the last decade or two, a large fraction of new immigrants were either refugees or "family class"; that is, relatives or dependents of an accepted immigrant. Emigration of capital and highly skilled people to the US has continued; however, the numbers leaving are too few to have significantly influenced mobility among those who remained.

Participation in the Labour Force

Participation rates, particularly those of women, also influence the numbers of competitors for positions. Public education, urbanization, the development of office work and economic need have all resulted in increasing numbers of entrants to the labour force. More young women are planning careers, having fewer children and returning to work shortly after childbearing.

Other kinds of social mobility are apparently less affected by changes in the size and composition of the work force. For example, the social characteristics of the Canadian elite have changed little in the last half century or more, despite changes in the general population. Members of the elite still tend to be male, white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants born into upper- or upper middle-class families. However, there is some variation from one part of Canada to another; for example, more francophone Catholics would be found in the Québec BUSINESS ELITE or the federal political elite than in the Ontario business or political elite. Otherwise excluded social groups enter the elite and the upper class in growing areas of the economy, as do, Italians and Jews in real estate and construction.

Multinational corporations also seem more likely to provide opportunities for mobility into elite positions than indigenous Canadian corporations. In general, however, social characteristics that limit the extent and rate of occupational mobility overall - characteristics such as gender, race, religion and class of origin - also appear to hinder entry into the elite.


Forms of Unequal Opportunity

Rates of mobility are also affected by prevailing recruitment rules and barriers. Average individuals are most able to enter positions in agencies that recruit outsiders and are committed to impartial recruitment, such as the federal civil service. Outside these organizations, elite positions are generally filled by the children of elite parents. For example, positions in medical schools are disproportionately filled by the children of doctors, and even in many skilled trades the right or opportunity to enter is passed from parent to child. Parental social class largely determines early educational opportunities and choices that are important to later mobility.

By and large, people do not make radical changes in their occupational or social position after entering the work force; they advance beyond their parents right away or not at all. Once they have started on a particular job ladder, they advance largely by seniority, so they can hardly change their position relative to their workmates. The labour market is also split into many segments, eg, jobs entered by means of credentials, jobs entered by means of union membership and jobs entered by anyone. People starting out in one segment will rarely, if ever, compete with people in another; eg, casual labourers will rarely compete with licensed skilled workers or accredited professionals.


Unequal Opportunity

Outside of structural mobility, and because little exchange mobility and free competition occurs, Canadians do not enjoy equal opportunity to advance. Leaving wealth and status aside, Canadians also compete unequally for power because Canadian society protects power in various ways. Family power is preserved in wealth. Many occupations and positions of authority are closed to people without credentials; eg, university degrees. Those who can obtain such credentials are drawn disproportionately from the middle and upper classes.

Attempts to Equalize Opportunity
The attempt to redistribute wealth through TAXATION and TRANSFER PAYMENTS has failed to reduce inequality of wealth significantly. However, antidiscrimination laws or efforts at employment equity are especially valuable for traditionally excluded groups such as women and racial minorities. Evidence suggests these efforts are beginning to affect occupational mobility especially in public-sector organizations such as government and universities.

The widening of educational opportunity - more universities, increased admittance of students, the provision of more scholarships - has weakened the original value of the credentials and has led to demands by employers for rarer credentials. Still, higher education has helped many children of poorer families to obtain better jobs than they might otherwise have obtained even if top positions are closed to them.


Collective Mobility

Collective mobility has been an effective means of equalizing opportunity. Increasingly, groups of people with a common goal, eg, unions or associations of professionals, have co-operated to advance themselves. But other, less obvious groups have also mobilized collectively, including ethnic groups such as the Toronto Italian community, language groups such as Canadian Francophones, regional or provincial groups, and networks comprising personal acquaintances, friends or family. In many instances collective mobilization has advanced both group and individual interests. Yet the collective mobilization of everyone would ensure a new stalemate - an indirect, inefficient way of eliminating social inequality.

Trends in Canadian Research and Writing
Research on elites, which examined national and international networks of interlocking directorships throughout the 1970s, became less common in the 1980s and 1990s. More research effort was devoted to studying the social mobility of non-elite people. Using large sample surveys, this research has replicated American mobility work concerned with occupational and status attainment, and has found Canada to be similar to the US- in social mobility at least. Social mobility in Canada today closely resembles mobility inthe US and other modern industrial nations.

The 1990s have been fertile years for social mobility research, since they have been years of economic recession and organizational downsizing. This has meant increased unemployment, increased competition for available jobs, increased downward (career) mobility and decreased upward (career) mobility. Many researchers have pointed to the decline of the middle class, the growing gap between the rich and poor, and a younger generation whose chances of upward mobility are worse than those that had faced their parents and even grandparents. Thus, the recession has brought to a halt the growth in upward intergenerational mobility for the first time in a century.

Despite this gloomy overall picture, some research findings point in a more positive direction. For example, research on the experience of ethnic minorities by Breton et al proves that John Porter's image of Canada as a VERTICAL MOSAIC (1965) of ethnic groups is less valid today. In contrast to John Porter's analysis of the 1950s and 1960s, Breton says that ethnic origin has little if any effect on white Canadians today, when other factors (such as education, gender and class of origin) are held constant.
However, other research shows that racial discrimination towards visible minorities hampers social mobility. At least for members of visible minority groups, Canada continues to be a "vertical mosaic."


Mobility by Gender

The most interesting research on social mobility today is being done on the mobility of women. Recent research by Creese, Guppy and Meissner suggests a continuing importance of gender in status attainment, alongside declining importance in ethnicity and language group. The mobility of women is documented in a variety of studies using varied data. Some research has paid attention to economic theories of labour-market segmentation and to effects on women of the introduction of new technologies. Unlike the traditional mass survey studies that focused on occupational mobility, recent research has examined major structural changes in the incidence of service sector work. Of particular interest have been changes in part-time work and changed patterning of careers by married women.

Studying the lives of Canadian women, Jones, Marsden and Tepperman, have concluded that increasingly women are experiencing varied patterns of horizontal and vertical mobility. Women's lives have become marked by great variety, fluidity and idiosyncrasy compared with the lives of their mothers, fathers, brothers or husbands. What's more, their lives are even unlike one another's: in a word, their patterns of educational, domestic and work mobility are "individualized."

Future research on social mobility is likely to continue focusing on the issues raised here, especially on the varying kinds and rates of social mobility experienced across the life cycle. We are far from fully understanding race- or gender-based differences in social mobility, or the reasons group differences in social mobility increase during periods of economic difficulty like the 1990s.







these notes are taken from an article of
L. TEPPERMAN

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Demography, the study of changes affecting human population, is concerned with the overall POPULATION, the immediate phenomena that alter it as a whole (births, deaths, migrations), or changes in its composition (sex, age, marital status, language, religion, education, income, etc). A population is usually defined as a group of individuals living in a particular area. However, studies are often conducted on subpopulations (eg, ethnic groups), the school-age population or the working population. This is the "narrow" concept of demography. Over the past 300 years, demographers have developed an impressive battery of methods for analysing all these phenomena and the ways in which they relate to one another. This set of facts, relationships and methods constitutes the heart of demography. When confined to this core area, demography is virtually a branch of mathematics and can also be applied to animal or plant populations. Most demographers, however, devote themselves to studies that go beyond this core; eg, by questioning why purely demographic phenomena (fertility, mortality, nuptiality, age structure) vary and what social consequences may result from these variations. The resulting studies cover a large number of disciplines, in particular sociology, ethnology, economics, history, psychology and biology.


Strictly speaking, demography has no subdisciplines. Whether or not demography has subdisciplines is debatable. One might hold that population economics and population genetics, for instance, have developed a core of methods, concepts and knowledge that justifies the "subdiscipline" label. Two types of demographic studies may, however, be defined: those confined to narrow demography (some of these studies use rather sophisticated mathematical models), and those concerned with relationships between purely demographic and social (or sometimes biological) phenomena where statistical methods common to all scientific disciplines are used.


Evolution of Demography in Canada

Demography, a very empirical discipline, draws upon few theoretical models and many statistical findings. These findings were mostly supplied by censuses and vital statistics (ie, statistical information on births, marriages and deaths). In Canada, as in other industrialized countries, these information sources once constituted the very basis of demography (see DEMOGRAPHIC DATA COLLECTION). Now, they are more and more supplemented by surveys.

With the 1871 census, a few elementary analyses of a historical nature were performed, but it was not until 60 years later that the Dominion Bureau of Statistics, the predecessor of Statistics Canada, once again began to conduct demographic analyses of its data. The 1931 census contained 10 very detailed monographs published in 2 volumes. There were 2 census monographs in 1941, none in 1951, 8 in 1961, about 10 in 1971 and none in 1981. The authors were primarily university researchers. Since 1961 more limited studies, always linked to censuses, have been conducted on various aspects of Canada's population. Since 1974 Statistics Canada has from time to time published population forecasts for all of Canada and for every province.

Statistics Canada employs many, but not more than one-tenth of Canadian demographers. The contributions of a few pioneer researchers are noteworthy: Histoire de la population canadienne-française, the work of journalist Georges Langlois, was published during the thirties, and Enid Charles's remarkable work on fertility was published during the 1940s. During the 1950s several researchers, including 2 reputed Canadian demographers who now work in the US, Nathan Keyfitz and Norman B. Ryder, began to produce work in demography.

It was not until the 1960s that groups of professors specializing in population research and training students in demography established a few Canadian university programs designed specifically for this discipline. There is only one real department of demography (at the Université de Montréal), but at the University of Alberta and the University of Western Ontario, groups of professors, researchers and students interested mainly in population studies work within departments of sociology. Demography is also taught at a number of other universities where there is no formal training program. Outside of universities, most researchers in demography are employed in departments and certain para-public agencies of the federal and provincial governments.


Scope of Application

In examining the work of the 400 Canadian demographers, it will be found that "applied" demographic studies relate mainly to the forecasting of housing, health and education needs, and services to the elderly; to client forecasts concerning certain major public services; and to the development of policies relating to economic planning, birth control, social welfare, manpower, immigration, language and the preservation of cultural minority groups. However, certain studies (eg, population forecasts, which are helpful to all sorts of users, and some research conducted in universities, which is oriented toward knowledge of the past and problems of developing nations), are not as precisely defined.

Institutions

In Canada there are 2 demography associations and a national federation. Founded in 1971, the Association des démographes du Québec has a membership of a little less than 200 francophone demographers. It publishes the Cahiers québécois de démographie twice a year. The English counterpart is the Canadian Population Society, founded in 1974. It has more than 200 members and publishes the biannual journal Canadian Studies in Population.

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@ Khuhro

Your profile says that you are a civil servant. Are you?

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The Me you have always known, the Me that's a stranger still.

yes a civil servent, but not CSP (still)...............

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And what are you trying to share in above posts? Demography of Canada? Are you studying Sociology with respect to Canada?

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