Sociology provides many distinctive perspectives on the world, generating new ideas and critiquing the old; therefore, mapping our past and shaping our future. The field also offers a range of research techniques that can be applied to virtually any aspect of social life: street crime and delinquency, corporate downsizing, how people express emotions, welfare or education reform, how families differ and flourish, or problems of peace and war. Because sociology addresses the most challenging issues of our time, it is a rapidly expanding field whose potential is increasingly tapped by those who design policies and create programs. Sociologists understand social inequality, patterns of behavior, forces for social change and resistance, and how social systems work.
The diversity of theoretical perspectives should make it clear that sociology is not a well-defined discipline with a unified view of the world. It should be stressed that the differences revealed by the above perspectives typically do not stem from contradiction or antagonism, but have complementarity. …
