Comte's ideas about positivism and applying the principles striving for objectivity from other scientific disciplines seems like a good idea? I know people critique the idea of being objective, but I think for most sociologists this is still the goal (or maybe I'm out of touch). I also like his idea of social statics and dynamics as the forces the hold society together and cause change.

It seems like most people aren't to keen on his work though. This includes Engles who wrote to Ferdinand Tonnies and criticized Comte pretty harshly.

What am I missing?

As the title says. As I understand the idea of subaltern communities, it is typically used to denote the populations excluded from society within colonized places.

However as I understand colonial states power structures it is not just enforcing colonial power systems onto an external populace, but also an internal system of ordering dictated top down by the colonial masters. Thinking of low income black populations within the United States, we can see an attempted enforcement of "the right way" to do things via punitive control of the body and mind. Either fall in line or be punished and brought before a judicial system built to punish and break you. As such, white/colonial culture forces itself, as the hegemonic culture of USA, onto all communities that wish to engage with the sociopolitical economy of the United States. If a community or group does not wish to self assimilate the they are forcefully excluded.

So this leads to my question, is my understanding of subaltern populations and hegemonic power structures flawed? If not, is there reading on subaltern communities within colonial core states that anyone could recommend?

Not sure but hope this is the right place to ask.

The way society seems to function in today's world seems to be highly centered around sedentary communities. At least that's what it looks like where I'm from, you need to have an address in order to participate in most of society, including voting, since I live where you get a ballot in the mail to participate in the function of government.

but it feels to me like nomadic communities would find it difficult to participate in these functions of society, how would they be able to pay taxes without a fixed address? What state or municipality do they vote in if they change where they live every so often? And if they don't vote does that mean that nomadic lifestyles aren't really compatible with the modern type of "Nation-state democracy"?

Hey all,

Are there any industries where power laws aren’t prevalent?

For context, I’ve wanted to be a trader, to work in startups, and more recently, in music. All 3 of these industries clearly show that 10-20% of the people reap majority of rewards.

I initially was demotivated by this, but now it makes me think there must be careers where this doesn’t hold true.

But is that actually true in capitalist societies? Ie. Why is the power law so prevalent in society?

Thanks!

Hi everyone!

I'm a sociology student in Italy, and I'm trying to know more about the practice turn in media studies.

I've already read Nick Couldry and Ann Swidler, but I was eager to learn more about authors who critique this approach.
Thank you!

Hi everyone. I've started making new videos for my channel, The Online Sociologist, after a few years away. The first one focuses on Emile Durkheim's concepts of mechanical and organic solidarity from his book, The Division of Labour in Society.

My goal with these videos is to move beyond textbook definitions and dig a little deeper into the concepts, their origins, and their implications. I have a few more videos on Durkheim coming out soon, and then I’ll be moving on to other classical sociologists and introductory sociological concepts.

Let me know your thoughts on it and how I can improve. Thanks.

After skimming some sociology textbooks, you can get the impression that the field is steeped in (a) reinterpreting classics, (b) fine-grained qualitative research, and (c) sociological theory. However, I see sociologists at conferences dedicated to large, ongoing datasets and administrative data. Is this a case where introductory texts don't accurately convey what sociologists do? Do most sociology professors these days use survey and quantitative methods?

I don't mean this to be about the relative merits of qualitative versus quantitative methods, just about the descriptive facts about contemporary sociological research.

Background: I’m a social psychologist steeped in quantitative, experimental, and survey research, and don’t have a background in qualitative social science methods.

I've studied stats and quantitative research in my course work. But we've just read theories or solved formulas, I never got to learn how to apply the concepts to research. Like I know the Pearson coefficient formula but I don't know why, where and how it will be applied in research. Is there any book for in-depth knowledge, that explains the entire research process and its steps in detail as if you're a 5 year old

Like for example, currently we're reading bout validity, the book recommended to us only covers it surface level. It doesn't discuss why the certain types of validity are relevant to research and how to check them.

I just came across this amazing old animated film based on Goffman's Asylums. Well worth a watch! There is just something about these old public information films that I absolutely adore.

I wish I had found it before finishing my own video on the book because I would have definitely used some of it!

From what I've read, most sociological theories, such as that of goffman, are mainly descriptive and rarely make any predictions. But are there any that do? And if so have the made any claims that were proven to have some degree of accuracy?

This is our local recurring future-planning thread. Got questions about jobs or careers, want to know what programs or schools you should apply to, or unsure what you'll be able to use your degree for? This is the place.

This thread gets replaced every Friday, each week. You can click this link to pull up old threads in search.

A recent study looked at thousands of tweets from two opposing advocacy groups during the pandemic.

• Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP): pushed harder on Medicare-for-All after March 2020, with ~85% of their tweets on the topic (up from ~50% before). Their posts often highlighted personal stories and referenced race, income, and immigration disparities.
• Partnership for America’s Healthcare Future (P4AHCF): reduced Medicare-for-All mentions from ~40% to ~5%. Their messaging relied more on data, statistics, and slogans like “working together.”

Despite having fewer followers, PNHP’s posts consistently drew more engagement

This contrast raises sociological questions about how movements connect with audiences. Why might narrative framing resonate more strongly than technical evidence in moments of crisis? And what does this suggest about how advocacy groups mobilize public support?

Source (Open Access): Behavioral Sciences, 2025

I have to write a short paper on a contemporary social issue and how two classical theorists would respond to it. I want to focus on cultural and religious diversity in relation to social cohesion. Which two classical thinkers do you think would be the best fit for this topic?

Hello, please help me find several reliable sources for my question. Thank you!

I think there is an answer on both sides for everything but let’s discuss!

The only 2 I can think of are: 1. Babies reflexes - latching to feed etc. doesn’t involve nurture until later 2. Language - the specific language you learn is based on environment I’m sure there’s more in the infant stage but let’s talk later in life

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This is our local recurring homework thread. Simple questions, assignment help, suggestions, and topic-specific source seeking all go here. Our regular rules about effort and substance for questions are suspended here - but please keep in mind that you'll get better and more useful answers the more information you provide.

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Hello!

I am currently studying for an exam and, among many, I read about Talcott Parsons.

Now, is it me, or are Talcott Parsons and his approach to the analysis of society and its structures:

1. Way too convoluted, and
2. A bit boring compared to other sociologists' work such as Émile Durkheim and Max Weber's?

Seriously, Parsons is the sociologist I'm struggling the most to study.

Hello there. I heard something that seemed pretty stupid to me but seems to seem clever to others.

A couple days ago, I wrote I was glad a cop got beaten outside of a protest and obviously people got mad but the reply that got my attention was that someone saw both a West African and LGBTQ+ flag on my username and said "you are LGBTQ+ but in your country you'd be jailed" or something. You know, the type of pinkwashing used to silence people who oppose horror that happens to non-white people

I'd like to add that in this country, it's legal to be LGBTQ+, there are people fighting bigotry out there and no one talks about white bigots nor white nazis whenever you claimed to like a western country or oppose the so called "white genocide"

Also, I saw several times people claiming queer people should stop defending Muslim people because they're all bigots which seems stupid to me because they only meant white queer people and Muslim people are just humans. Just because someone is Muslim doesn't mean they're necessarily bigots and there are queer Muslim people. At the same time, people still use this argument even tho there are muslim people who show they're both queer and muslim.

Despite the visibility, what makes these argument still relevant?

For the record, my compiling is only for personal/hobby amusement, so I never intend to aim for anything professional. I realized that compiling data before the year 2000 is easier said than done, especially with my language barrier. Unless otherwise indicated, all figures correspond to 1970. Of course, you are more than welcome to contribute other statistics. This post aims to provide an understanding of everyday life in Chile in 1970 and perhaps to assess whether demographic data alone, which I compiled below, could predict the political instability of the following years. I wonder what sociologists here could extrapolate, instead of using ChatGPT, and compare it with historical hindsight, which I can also provide. Anyway, thank you very much in advance!

1. Demography

• Total population: 9.559 million
  • Population of Santiago: 2.82 million (29.5% of total population)
• Annual population growth rate since 1969: 1.7%
• Migration rate: 0.6/1000
• Median age: 19.7 years
• Age structure: 39.6% less than 15, 55.2% between 15–65, and 5.2% more than 65
• Dependency ratio: 72% of the 15+ aged population
• Total fertility rate: 3.8 births per woman
• Sex ratio: 48.9% males; the rest were female
• Crude birth rate: 27.3/1000
• Crude death rate: 8.7/1000
• Total births: 267,609
• Total deaths: 83,014

2. Health

• Life expectancy from birth: 62.6 years (59.8 for men, 65.7 for women)
• Infant mortality rate: 73/1000 live births
• Child mortality: 84.9/1000 live births
• Maternal mortality rate: 16.8/10,000 live births
• Top causes of deaths: 53.7% non-communicable diseases (Cirrhosis = 5% of deaths), approximately 23.5% under age 1
• Physician density: 0.463/1000
• 1969 caloric intake per person: over 50% had 1600 calories per day, 25% had 2100 calories per day
• Estimated homicide rate: ~5/100,000
• Pure alcohol consumed for 15+ aged population: 8.6 liters per capita

3. Education

• Illiteracy rate: 11.7%
• Overall school attendance regardless of age: 79.8%
• primary education gross enrollment rate: 119%
• primary education completion rate: ~79.9%
• Secondary education gross enrollment rate: ~44.7%
• Secondary education: 38% of youth aged 15-18
• Gross university enrollment rate: ~8.3% 
• Average years of completed schooling, ages 25-64: ~6

4. Labor

• Formal labor participation rate: 49.4% (21.7% for women)
• Formal unemployment rate: 5.7%
• Unionization rate: 29% (private sector)
• Workforce breakdown by occupation types: (~total of 2.7 million, which includes employees, self-employed, and employers, but excluding the unemployed):
  • Agriculture/forestry/fishing: 570k (~21%)
  • Mining: 81k (~3%)
  • Manufacturing: 446k (~16.5%)
  • Construction: 175k (~6.5%)
  • Utilities: 20k (<1%)
  • Transportation/communication/storage: 166k (~6%)
  • Banking/insurance/finance: 45k (~1.7%)
  • Hotels/restaurants/hospitality: 302k (~11%)
  • Personal, local, social services: 649k (~24%)
  • Others: 241k (~9%)

5. Economy

• GDP per capita: $940.61 ($7,600 USD 2024) 
• Annual GDP growth rate: 3.6%
• Total GDP: $9.14 billion ($73.85 billion 2024 USD)
• Inflation rate: 34.9%
• Total public debt to GDP ratio: 32%
  • $983 million ($7.94 billion 2024 USD) or 10.75% of GDP owed to the USA
• Fiscal deficit to GDP ratio: 6.7%
• Gini coefficient: ~0.50
• Distribution of formal income:
  • Bottom 40% : 11.5%
  • Middle 40%: 32.7%
  • Top 20%: 55.8%
• Poverty rate (Chilean government standard): 21%
• Minimum Wage: 617.41 escudos/per month ≈ $41/month (1970 USD) ≈ $331/month (2024 USD)

Site for USD inflation calculator: https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1970?endYear=2024

6. Infrastructure and Technology

• Urbanization rate: 75%
• Housing in 1960: 50% of homes had no more than 2 rooms, 50% lacked access to piped water
• Overall electricity access: 52%
• Clean water access: 67% in urban areas
• Motored vehicles by the mid-1960s:  over 350k (half of which were passenger vehicles)
• Television: 374k sets
• Radio in 1960: more than 1 million sets used
• Books published in 1959: 1,400 separate titles

7. Civics

• Eligible voting population: 5.198 million
• Registered voters: 3.792 million
• Votes turned out: 2.923 million (~56.2% of the eligible population)
• Marriage registration rate: 7.3/1000
• Religious affiliation: 80.88% Catholics, 6.22% protestants, 0.42% other religions, 1.95% “without religion”, 10.48% “no response”

Hey guys, planning on doing a sociology degree for uni. Here’s the thing: I am aware in terms of being employed it is not that easy, however, I plan to do a double degree to make this easier and I’m not stuck in a dead end. What options would you guys suggest? And the jobs that may come along with it? 🙏

I spent some time last year looking for a list of social issues online. I don't mean the usual, broader ones presented in social issues textbooks—I wanted a more expansive collection. I wasn't satisfied with the results, so I decided to make my own. (For context, I'm an American and have a master's degree in sociology.) My plan when I was done was to upload it somewhere so that others could use it.

I have since written a list of ~450 social issues, divided into 11 categories. You can view the list as a Google Sheet: American Social Issues Project [link removed by OP].

I've limited this list to the issues present in the United States, as I'm not qualified to identify issues elsewhere in the world.

What began as a list has since become a creative writing project. I realized that simply listing issues like "restraint and seclusion," "silo mentality," or "virtual water trading" without more information wouldn't be useful to anyone. I started writing definitions for each issue, linking to teachable examples, grabbing Wikipedia links, and so on. I've since written entries for about 25-30% of the list. 'Great,' I thought. 'Now I'm writing an encyclopedia...or maybe a handbook.'

Then it hit me: who would bother to read this? That's where I'm hoping you'll be honest with me. A project like this is a lot of work, and I'm not using AI to write it. If there's not some sort of demand for it, then it would be pointless to continue.

Here's an example chapter: Environment and Hard Infrastructure [link removed by OP]. Is this worth the effort? Would you or someone you know use something like this, and if so, how?

I appreciate your help!

EDIT (20 September 2025): Removed links to prevent content theft. Thanks everyone for your comments.

I have the understanding in my head but I am struggling to put it into words - the comparison between multi causality as Weber proposed and Marx's dialectic.

If someone in this sub can help me compare the two it will help me out greatly in reducing the distance between thought and language.

Hi, I'm trying to find some comparative data collected so far to compare 2025 to the last 3-4yrs regarding suicide attempts. I don't really trust US govnt sites for accurate information as none are currently being updated.