The Sociology of today is far less grand. It is the study of man's organizations and social institutions, largely by a comparative method. It has concentrated on the organization of complex industrial societies; anthropology has studied simpler and more static ones, though there is no intrinsic reason for dividing the subject that way.
However, in deference to Mr. Comte, Social Psychology, yet another discipline has embarked upon the study of how society's structure influences individuals and groups. Perhaps one of its founders, W.I. Thomas' definition of situational dynamics best describes how these varied disciplines might be related: He wrote: "If you define a situation as real, it is real to you in its consequences...however, your definition of a situation may be influenced by how others define the same situation."
This simple paradigm calls into question the four disciplines of Sociology, Cultural Anthropology, Social Psychology and Traditional psychology and how they relate to each other and to their various definitions of society. Perhaps they should be grouped into a single discipline called Cultural Sociology. (Which would include all four disciplines and certain studies within Economics, History, Political Science, Statistics and Chaos Theory.)
A distinction should be made between these and forensic studies within these disciplines, particularly where anatomy is involved. These latter studies might be better named as Forensic psychology.
See also sociologist, Milgram experiment, disabilities, media studies
Influential sociologists: [Auguste Comte]?, [Emile Durkheim]?, Max Weber, [Talcott Parsons]?, [Robert K. Merton]?, [Erving Goffman]?
Influences on sociology: Karl Marx, [Georg Simmel]?, [George Herbert Mead]?, Ferdinand Saussure, [Alfred Schutz]?, Claude Levi-Strauss
Branches of sociology: Sociology of Religion
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