Social Science
Historical Development of economics
1776 by Scottish Philosopher Adam Smith published An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. There was, of course, economics before Smith: the Greeks made significant contributions, as did the medieval scholastics, and from the 15th to the 18th century an enormous amount of pamphlet literature discussed and developed the implications of economic nationalism (a body of thought known as mercantilism).
TO maintain the equilibrium of the system, parsons identified four imperatives for societies to survive which he called the AGIL model
Adaptation - acquiring and mobilizing sufficient resources so that the system can survive Goal Attainment - setting and implementing goals Integration - maintaining solidarity or coordination among the subunits of the system Latency - creating, preserving, and transmitting the system's distinctive culture and values (McMahon 2015 Emphasis added)
Historical development of Political Science
Aristotle book entitled Politics is considered a pioneer in the field of political inquiry; delves on the topic of government an the leaders behind it; talks about the concept of justice and slavery; books makes the connection between the happiness and virtue of the political community to the people's participation in politics; analysis on the causes of revolution and what prevents it have been a source of inspiration to the other political thinkers like John Locke and John Stuart Mill. Locke's known work Two Treatises of Government (1689) which discusses the concept of representative government and the people's right to revolution; Mill's Consideration on Representative Government (1861); Central and Eastern Europe finally considered Political Science as a discipline during the 1990's
Brief history of Social Sciences
Beginning in the 1950's, the term behavioral sciences was often applied to the disciplines designated as the social sciences. Those who favoured this term did so in part because these disciplines were thus brought closer to some of the sciences, such as physical anthropology, and physiological psychology, which also deal with human behavior
There are three main components of the looking glass self:
Charles Cooley: Cooley developed the idea of the looking glass self; we imagine how we must appear to others; we imagine the judgement of that appearance; we develop our self through the judgments of others
Three Major Fields of Psychology
Clinical, Developmental, and Experimental
Cultural Anthropology
Investigates and seeks to understand the cultural features of societies; The three subbranches of Cultural Anthropology: Archeology, Anthropological linguistic, and ethnology
Historical development of Psychology
German Psychologist Wilhelm Wundt is considered as the Father of Modern Psychology and credited for being the first in the movement to make psychology a science, conducted the first true experimental laboratory in psychology and his major contribution to the field is GRundzuge der Phsyiological PSychology1837; William James studied the concept of Functionalism which analyzes the function and or purpose of behavior and not simply a description; Sigmund Freud is known for his psychoanalytic personality theory, which divides the personality into id, ego, and super ego. He also wrote the theory on the psychosexual stages of development
Historical Development of Anthropology
Herodotus of Halicarnassus; Major step of evolution is the period of European conquest during the sixteen century; The period of the enlightenment in the eighteenth century that anthropology came of age
The main principles of symbolic interactionism are
Human being act toward things on the basis of the meanings that things have for them; these meanings arise out of social interaction; social action results from a fitting together of individual lines of action
Anthropological Linguistics
Involves the study of language in the society or communities where language may or maybe not written; It also concerned with the emergence of languages, and the changes in the languages across time
Historical development of Demography
Kaitilya, a cotemporary of Plato, commented in his Arthashastra that a large population is a source of military, political, economic strength of a nation; same idea is espoused by Ibn Khaldin, a fourteen century Arab historian, contended that a dense population growth is generally favourable to the maintenance and increase of imperial power; thinking has been reversed in later times when an increase in population growth in seen as seen as a bane to developing scientist; Edmond Hallery was the first scientist to study a person's likelihood of death as he or she passes through different age groups using death statistics from across the different groups and wrote a book entitled an estimate of the degrees of the mortality of mankind, drawn from the curious tables of the births of funerals at the city of Breslaw 1753; Thomas Malthus' book An Essay on the Principle of Population 1798 highlighted the main area of inquiry which scarcity of resources and he believes growing in geometric progression
Different functions
Manifest, latent
Economics divided into two scopes
Microeconomics, Macroeconomics
Basic Concepts of Demography
Mortality, Fertility, Migration
Three Approaches under NEw Institutionalism
NOrmative, Historical, Rational
The Looking Glass Self
Neurological evidence, based on EEGs, supports the idea that humans have a "social brain," meaning, there are components of the human brain that govern social interaction; these parts of the brain begin developing in early childhood (the preschool years) and aid humans in understanding how other people think; In symbolic interactionism, this is known as "reflected appraisals" or "the looking glass" and refers to our ability thin about how other people will think about us; In 1902, Charles Horton Cooley developed the social psychological concept of the looking glass self. The term was used in his work, Human NAture and the Social Order:; The Looking Glass Self: this drawing depicts the looking glass self. The person at the front of the image is looking into four mirrors, each of which reflects someone else's image of himself
Two major traditions of institutionalism
Old and new
Broad fields of anthropology
Physical ad cultural
Symbolic Interactionism
Sociological framework that focuses on the different meaning individuals attach to objects, people, and interactions as well as the corresponding behaviors that reflect those meanings and or interpretations; a framework that actualizes the nature f humans to make sense of their actions and interactions through external cues from their everyday life and environment (Vejar 2015); theoretical approach to understanding the relationship between humans and society. The basic notion of symbolic interactionism is that human action and interaction are understandable only through the exchange of meaningful communication or symbols. In this approach, humans are portrayed as acting, as opposed to being acted upon. The main principles of symbolic interactionism are
Subbranches of Cultural Anthropology
Reconstruction of past life of ancient societies: focus is on techniques; Looks at artifacts: portables objects from tools to Venus sculptures; Trace the cultural changes that took place and the reasons behind the changes; Are history and Archaeology the same?; It is different the in the sense that history can only study societies that have left written records while archaeologist reconstruct the past using the fossil remains of human culture
Another Noted Functionalist
Robert Merton (1910-2003) pointed out that social processes often have many functions; a manifest function of college education, for example, includes gaining knowledge, preparing for a career, and finding a good job that utilizes that education; latent functions meeting new people, participating in extracurricular activities, or even finding a spouse or partner. Another latent function of education is creating a hierarchy employment based on the level of education attained; in his classification of social functions into manifest or latent, Merton recognized that the effects or outcomes of social structure are not necessarily good and not necessarily good for everyone
Differences between Social Sciences and Natural Sciences
Social science is different from Natural Science and humanities because its primary interest lies in predicting and explaining human behavior. Natural science, on the other hand aims to predict all natural phenomena and its studies are based on experimentally controlled condition of entities. Humanities seeks to understand "human reaction to events and the meanings human impose on experience as a function of culture, historical era, and life history * use of scientific method unites three fields of study although it is more commonly used in the social sciences and natural sciences than in humanities * use of jargon * differ in researcher involvement, you could say that in natural sciences they tend to neglect the researchers' influence, whereas in the social sciences the researchers' involvement matters *Differ in research paradigm
Rational Choice Theorist explanation of individual actions and the outcomes they lead to are anchored on three pillars
Strategies or courses of action open and available to them; Their preferences over the end-states to which combinations of actions chosen by the various players; their beliefs about important parameters such as others' preferences
Political Science
Studies the system of government, and the analysis of political activity and behavior. It is the systematic study of politics
Ethnology
Study of marriage customs, kinship relationship, economic systems, and religious rites of cultural groups, and compare it with the way of life of contemporary societies
Economics
Study of the efficient allocation of scarce resources in order to satisfy unlimited human needs and wants; word came from two Greek words, oikos meaning home and nomos meaning management; studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services; focuses on the behavior and interactions of economics agents and how economies work
History of Social Sciences
The social sciences do not precede the 19th century- that is, as distinct and recognized disciplines of thought- one must go back farther in time for the origins of some of their fundamental ideas and objectives. In the largest scene, the origins go all the way back to the ancient Greeks an d their rationalist inquiries into human nature, the state, and morality Greek determination to study all things in the spirit of dispassionate and rational inquiry, there would be no social sciences today. True, there have been long periods of time, as during the Western Middle Ages, when the Greek rationalist temper was lacking. But the recovery of this temper, through texts of the great classical philosophers, is he very essence of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment in modern European history. With the Enlightenment, in the 17th and 18th centuries, one may begin
Symbolic Interactionism
This approach stands in contrast to the strict behaviorism of psychological theories prevalent at the time it was the first formulated (the 1920s and 1930s) According to the symbolic interactionism, humans are distinct from infrahumans (lower animals) because infrahumans simply respond to their environment (i.e a stimulus evokes a response) whereas humans have the ability to interrupt that process (i.e stimulus then cognition then response) Additionally, infrahumans are unable to conceive of alterative responses to gestures. Humans, however, can. This understanding should not be taken to indicate that humans never behave in a strict stimulus then response fashion, but rather that humans have the capability of responding in a different way, and do so much of the time; This perspective is also rooted in phenomenological thought. According to symbolic interactionism, the objective world has no reality for humans; only subjectively defined objects have meaning. There is no single objective "reality"; there are only (possibly multiple, possibly conflicting) interpretations of a situation. Meanings are not entities that are bestowed on humans and learned by habituation; instead, meanings can be altered through the creative capabilities of humans, and individuals may influence the many meanings that form their society. Human society, therefore, is a social product
Social Science
an academic discipline concerned with society and the relationships among individuals within society, which often rely primarily in empirical approaches. (science daily)
Secondary Source
an account of someone who is not an eyewitness to the event being narrated; not contemporary to the event being narrated; uses materials as the sources of information; example: biographies, textbooks, conference proceedings, and book reviews
Social dysfunction
any social pattern that may disrupt the operation of society (Macionis 2007, 16)
Land
anything that comes from nature and which gives life support to all living creature (clean air, timber resources, and water)
clinical psychology
assesses and finds treatment for people with psychological disorders
Historical development of Sociology
born as a result of powerful complex economic and social forces; industrial revolution created massive changes not just in the field of technology and in the way goods are manufactured, but also in the work and living pattern of the people; Factory life pulled people away from their homes, changed their work schedules, and weakened their family ties; has drawn more people to the cities causing problems associated with urbanization; French social thinker Auguste Comte who coined the word sociology in the 1838 to encapsulate the idea of improving society by understanding how it operates; some of his works: Cause on positive philosophy, system of positive polity, treatise on sociology, instituting the religion of humanity; other well known sociologist are Jane Addams and Harriet Martineau regarded as the first woman sociologist
Natural Sciences
branch of history concerned with the description, prediction, and understanding of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatability of findings are used to try to ensure the validity of scientific advances
Cooley
clarified this concept in his writings, stating that society is an interweaving and interworking of mental selves; in hypothesizing the framework for the looking glass self, Cooley said, "the mind is mental" because "the human mind is social." As children, humans begin to define themselves within the context of their socializations. The child learns that the symbol of his/her crying will elicit a response from his/her parents, not only when they are in need of necessities, such as food, but also as a symbol to receive their attention; George Herbert Mead described self as "taking the role of the other," the premise for which the self is actualized. Through interaction with others, we begin to develop an identity about who we are, as well as empathy for others. This is the notion of, "The thing that moves us to pride or shame is not the mere mechanical reflection of ourselves, but an imputed sentiment, the imagined effect of this reflection upon another's mind."; It should be noted that symbolic interactionists advocate a particular methodology. Because they see meaning as the fundamental component of the interaction of human and society, studying human and social interaction requires an understanding of that meaning. Symbolic interactionist tend to employ more qualitative, rather than quantitative, methods in their research
Linguistics
comes from the LAtin word lingua meaning language; discipline that studies that nature of language through an examination of the formal properties of natural language, grammar, and the process of language acquisition
Historical development of Linguistics
considered a province of philosophy and rhetoric; led by the sophist of Classical Greece who have given young, wealthy Greek men an education in the art of public speaking, which in turn they can use to view for public positions; 1786 regular sound correspondences were found across the many languages of Europe, India's Sanskrist, and Persia; led to the discovery of a parent language called Proto Indo-European; scholars have been made relevant contributions to the study are Fredrich von Schlegel, Franz Bopp, and Rasmus Christian Rask; Research into the early inhabitants of Spain by the help of Basque language (1821) by Wilhelm von Humboldt and Ferdinand de Saussure's Cors de linquistique generale (1916)
History
considered by many historians as part of humanities
Microeconomics
deals with the analysis of individual parts of the economy. Concerns factors determining the behavior of a consumer, the behavior of a firm, the demand for a good, the supply of a good, the price of a good, the quantity of a good, the performance of a market, etc
Methodologies of economics
economic methodology, broadly conceived, is the study of how economics functions, how it could function, and how it should function and of the various presuppositions and conditions of all these; examines various meta theoretical key concepts such as theory and model, assumption and idealization, causation and explanation, testing and progress, rhetoric, and truth, social construction and pluralism; as well as various goals, styles and constraints of research, such as mathematical modeling and experimentation, grounded theory and case study, casual and functional explanation, forecasting and policy, ontological and institutional (academic and otherwise) constraints on economic inquiry; also sets out to examine fundamental substantial concepts such as rationality, choice, routine, trust, institution evolution, coordination, equilibrium, path dependence
Rational Choice Insitutionalism
emphasizes the ways that actors create strategic decisions to maximize their opportunities and advance their own self interest
Structuralism
examines how political structures determine behavior
Anthropologist
examines the characteristics that human beings share as members of a single person and the diverse ways that people live in different environments; analyze the products of social groups both material objects and less materials creations such as beliefs and values; research is cross cultural and comparative
Historical Institutionalism
examines the evolution of institutions through trajectories
Normative Analaysis
examines values and beliefs and emphasizes the importance of having a "good government"
Historicism
explores how political systems are formed through their embeddedness in their historical, social, economic, and cultural structures
Science
facts, the systematic study of a thing
What is the work of psychology in the society
finds application in addressing issues like suicide and criminal behavior
Normative Institutionalism
focuses on shared values and consensus
Legalism
focuses on the function of law as an essential element in governing states
Structural Functionalism
framework for building a theory that sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and stability (Macionis 2007, 15); called structural functional theory sees society as a structure with interrelated parts designed to meet the biological and social needs of the individuals in that society
History of Structural Functionalism
functionalism grew out of the writings of English philosophers and biologist, Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) who saw similarities between society and the human body; he argued that just as the various organs of the body functioning, the various parts of society work together to keep society functioning (Spencer 1898); he parts of society that Spencer referred to were the social institutions, or patterns of beliefs and behaviors focused on meeting social needs, such as government, education, family, healthcare, religion, and the economy; Emile Durkheim, another early sociologist, applied Spencer's theory to explain how societies change and survive over time; he believed that society is a complex system of interrelated and interdependent parts that work together to maintain stability (Durkheim 1893), and that society is held together by shared values, languages, and symbols; he also believed to study society, a sociologist must look beyond individuals to social facts such as laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashion, and rituals, which all serve to govern social life. Alfred Radcliff-Brown (1881-1955) defined the function of any recurrent activity as the part it played in social life as a whole, and therefore the contribution it makes to social stability and continuity (Radcliff-Brown 1952); in a healthy society, all parts work together to maintain stability, a state called dynamic equilibrium by later sociologists such as Parsons (1961)
Historical development of History
hieroglyphs in Egypt or in the cuneiform engraved in mud brick tablets in Mesopotamia; can be even go as far back as the drawings made by the CRo MAgnos in there craves; historical method is credited to Herodotus of Halicarnassus who is a product of Greece's Hellenic age, wrote about the Greek wars against Persia during the third decade of the fifth century BC called the Histories; Another Greek historian Thucydides who wrote about the history of the Peloponnesian War in the fifth century BC
Fertility/Birth
incidence of child bearing in a country's population and it is where the study of human population starts (MAcionis, 2006 418); measured using crude birth rate or the number of live births for every 1000 people in a population
Mortality
incidence of death in a country's population; measured using crude death rate, or the number of deaths for every 1,000 in a population
Social Science
includes anthropology, economics, political science, psychology, sociology, and etc
Social Science
it is way of looking how society works, how we react, and adapt to changes
Four categories of factors of production
land, labor, capital, entrepreneurship
Old institutionalism approaches
legalism, structuralism, holism, normative analysis, historicism
Understanding Rational Choice Theory
many mainstream economic assumptions and theories are based on rational choice theory; often discussed and associated with the concepts of rational actors, the rationality assumption, self-interest, and the invisible hand; based on the assumption of involvement from rational actors which are the individuals in an economy making rational choices based on rational calculations and rationally available information; rational actors form the basis of rational choice theory and are what make rational choice theory effective. assumes that individuals are rational actors using rational information to try to actively maximize their advantage in any situation and therefore consistently trying to minimize their losses; economist may use the rationality assumption as part of broader studies seeking to understand certain behaviors of society as a whole. The rationality assumption assumes that all individuals under consideration are expected to be rational actors making rational choices based on rational choice theory to achieve the very best results for themselves and their own self-interests
Entrepreneruship
not considered to be a factor of production, is now taught to be indispensable aspect since this is the ability to organize all the other factors of production in order to carry out effectively the production process
Branches of Geography
physical and human
Rational Choice Theory
powerful tool in making sense of why people act or behave in the way they do. Nonetheless it is not a comprehensive theory that can fully account for one's behavior or activities; According to Elster 1989 (in Ward 2002, 65) "the essence of rational choice theory is that when faced with several of action, people usually do what they believe is likely to have the best overall outcome"; individuals actions are based on their preferences, beliefs, and feasible strategies (Ward 2002); But as Ward observed, rational choice theory "needs other perspective to help explain why individuals have the interest they do, how they perceive those interests, and the distribution of rules, powers, and social roles that determine that constraints on their actions"
Social Science
pursuit of true nature, it seeks to understand the nature of people and society
Holism
refers to how institutionalism compare entire political system, rather than individual institutions such as legislatures or bureaucracies
Old Insitutionalism
refers to institutions affect the behavior in relation to formal rules or procedures; it examines states entities laws and political processes to understand how societies work; their objective is to determine what institutional design is best to direct and regulate the behavior of individuals
Study of Comparative law
regarded as part of social science despite it being ordinarily pursued in schools of law
Historiography
regarded by many as a social science, and certain areas of historical study are almost indistinguishable from work done in the social sciences
Social Science
research on covers the full span of human behaviour (from economics to education sociology, geography, linguistic, social anthropology, psychology, etc)
Population Growth
simply the difference between the crude birth rate and crude death rate
Social
society, human being
Key takeaways: Rational Choice Theory
states that individuals rely on rational calculations to make rational choices that results n outcomes aligned with their own best interests; often associated with the concepts of rational actors, the rationality assumption, self-interest, and the invisible hand; often dominate across behavioral economics but there are many economists who also study irrational choices; many economists believe that the factors associated with rational choice theory are beneficial to the economy as a whole
Human Geography
studies human population and the impact of its activities include agriculture, urbanization, and land reclamation; examines how people use the resources available to them and how they cultivate their environment to suit their needs
developmental psychology
studies the intellectual, social, emotional. and moral development across a lifespan
Experimental Psychology
studies the most basic concepts of psychology like cognition, perception, memory, and learning but mostly conducted on animals instead of humans
Physical Geography
studies the natural features of the earth, like climate, water, vegetation, and soil; to look at the physical environment as the provider of natural resources, like food and water; look at the physical environment as hazard to human life
Physical/Biological Anthropology
studies the pat and present human forms or the biological human forms; COmparative Primate Anatomy: how similar or different we are from monkey and apes
Geography
studies the thing between the natural environment and the people living in it; acts as a bridge between natural science and social science; comes from two greek words geo meaning earth and graphos meaning charting or mapping; studies where things on Earth, explain why they are there to other people, places and things
Syntax
study how the words are combined to form a sentence, it is also categorized types of phrases and types of phrases and types of sentences
Psychology
study of behavior and mental processes. Study of behavior and the mind
Demography
study of human population; comes from two ancient Greek words demons meaning the people and graphos meaning charting and mapping; the disciplines also studies how people move from place to place; the main sources of data are census and other vital statistics
Sociology
study of human society; comes from the latin word socius meaning friend or companion and the Greek word logos meaning study; studies how people relate to each other and how they work as a whole in the particular; sees the general in the particular; " we begin to think sociologically (when we realize) how the general categories into which we fall shape our particular life experience; (Macionis, 2006.2) Social rules of behavior, societal expectations, and norms guide as individual's actions, thoughts, and feelings
Anthropology
study of humanity and human culture, focuses on all societies and all aspects of human physical, social, cultural life; comes from the Greek word anthropos meaning human kind and logos meaning the study; can make major contributions to international harmony because is helps provide our understanding of various cultures
Linguistics
study of language and its structure. Involves the description of languages, and the investigation of their origin, the inquiry of how children acquire language, and how individuals learn languages other than their own
Pragmatics
study of language context
Semantics
study of meaning making
Institutionalism
study of political institutions was dominant within political science in Britain and the US in the early twentieth century. Until 1950s, institutionalism enjoyed a privileged status within the discipline- its assumptions and practices as well as its methodological and theoretical premises were rarely questioned, let alone subject to the behavioralist critique (Lowndes 2002); The institutional approach can be understood as a subject matter, as a method, and as a theory. As a subject matter the study of political institutions is central to identify of the discipline of political science (Rhodes 1995); is an approach that emphasizes the role of institutions
Political Science
study of politics, power, and government; word comes from the Greek word politea, or a person who participates in the polis; engagement in the polis means taking part in its decision making, which normally takes place in the agora, or the market place, where new laws are passed or disseminated under the scrutiny of the entire community. But the engagement in the political decision-making in the polis is only limited to Greek men; process of using power in the government, while power means for government to rule the people
Phonology
study of speech pattern and it identifies what sounds are there and the categories in this speech
Psychology
study of the interest of society to understand how its people think and they behave in a certain way; study of behavior and mental processes; includes the mental and physical state and how this relates to the environment of the individual; comes from the words psyche meaning soul or spirit and logos meaning study
History
study of the past, how it relates to human. Describes or narrates and analyzes human activities in the past and the changes that these had undergone
primary source
testimony of an eyewitness or an account of someone who has firsthand account of someone who has firsthand information on the subject; has to be written or recounted by someone who is contemporary to the event being narrated; does not have to be an original, can be rewritten, recopied, or translated version of the original; too daunting a task and may even be close to impossible in some cases, insistence on getting the original document may prevent some subject from being written because the sources may be inaccessible; examples journal entries, transcripts, video interview, monuments or structures, photographs, statistics, and official government records
Brief history of Geography
the ancient people have been dabbling with geography even before the term was invented; the Babylonians were able to draw a map that clearly identifies their location in Mesopotamia; Homer's iliad and the odyssey also contain a lot of geographical information even though they are fictional works; during the hellenistic period in the ancient greco roman empire when ground breaking works have been done in the field of geography; Eratosthenes is the father of geography
Macroeconomics
the branch of economics that examines the workings and problems of the economy as a whole. IT is concerned with the aggregate supply (total national output of goods and services) and aggregate demand (the total spending of the whole economy) and issues such as economic growth, inflation, unemployment, and economic fluctuations
manifest functions
the consequences of a social process that are sought or anticipated
Demography
the interdisciplinary study of the size, growth, and distribution of human populations. Examines statistics such as births, deaths, income, or the incidence of disease, which illustrate the changing structure of human populations
Causes of Social Dysfunction
the lack of consensus among peoples in a given polity or society is key feature of every society or polity. Differences in backgrounds or status for instance, may lead to differences in recognition and appreciation of what is functional or not to particular individuals or groups of peoples. In a capitalist order, for example, high profits for factory owners can be seen as dysfunctional for factory workers as they receive low wages (Maciones 2007, 16)
Migration
the movement of people into and out of a particular territory
Economics
the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of goods and services. Term refers to the financial aspect of something as in 'the economics of managing a business.
Geography
the science of place, studies the distribution and arrangement of all elements of the earth's surface
Sociology
the scientific study of human social relations or group life. Deals with social interaction or the responses of persons to each other
Morphology
the study how the words are categorized or formed
Anthropology
the study of humans, examines all aspects of human life and cultures- seeks to understand human origins and adaptation, and the diversity of cultures and worldviews.
History
the study of recorded past; comes from the Greek word historia meaning learning; by Aristotle, history meant a systematic account of a set of natural phenomena, whether or not chronological ordering was a factor in the account (Gottscgalk 1956, 41)
Phonetics
the study of speech sounds and it examines how the sounds are made and identifies its properties
Labor
to any human effort exerted during the production process which includes physical exertion, application or skills, or talent of exercise of intellectual are built
Capital
to anything that can be used to create or manufacture goods and services
Beginnings of Rational Choice Theory (RCT)
traced back to the behavioral revolution in the American political science of the 1950s and the 1960's (Ward 2002) instigated by scholars following the behavioral tradition or persuasion, and hence, the name behavioral movement; strongly influenced by the positivist tradition in the social sciences, in particular, by the writing of August Come in the nineteenth century and the logical positivism of the "Vienna Circle" in the 1920s; behaviorialist adopt the view of positivism about the nature of empirical theory and explanation. In contrast to other social scientist, behavioralist believe that a. observable behavior whether it is at the level of the individual or the social aggregate should be the focus of analysis and b. any explanation of that behavior should be suspectible to empirical testing (Sanders 2002, 45); RCT become a dominant approach to political science at least in the US.But while it traces it beginnings to the behavioral movement "rational choice theory draws on the methdology of economics in contrast to behavioralists who drew on sociology or psychology" (Ward 2002, 65); Similar methods as i standard microeconomics, it is the economist who carried out largely early in rational choice. The most important tool used in the game theory. Central to the game theory is strategic interdependence, a situation where others' choice of strategy affects and individual's best choice and vice versa (Ward 1995)
latent functions
unsought consequences of a social process
New Institutionalism
which was deemed to be highly normative and perspective due to its focus on formal institutions alone; from analyzing formal elements of institution, shifted its focus to social groups and informal relationships
The Structural functional approach built on the following premises
within every social structure or system -politics, family, organizations- each member of the system has a specific function; those functions can be small or subtantial, are dynamic in nature (i.e, they can change). and work toward he same purpose: to keep the system operational within its environment; change is evident with any society or system-however, for the system to survive, it must adapt to that change in order to maintain its equilibrium (McMahon 2015)
