What is Sociology?

Sociology is the scientific study of people in groups and of the patterns and consequences of social interaction. At the same time that social structures and culture exert significant influence over our everyday lives, it is in the very details of social interaction that society is constructed, maintained, and changed. The study of sociology cultivates a critical perspective that relies on empirical evidence to demonstrate the effects of culture and social structures on the ways in which people think, feel, and act. To exercise what C. Wright Mills called the the “sociological imagination,” then, is to connect history and biography.