Dictionary of Sociology Collins David Jary and Julia Jary

Sociology is not a tidy subject. As the ‘science of society and social relations” its boundaries are wide and difficult to draw. It overlaps with all other social science disciplines, which, as the general science of society, it must take into account or can even be said to include. Since, in addition, its discourses are also continuous with those of ‘lay’ society, its subject-matter is often controversial and charged by ‘values’ as well as by seems erate disputes.

These features and other complexities of the subject are not a weakness of the subject, but are in many ways its strength: the fact that sociology reflects and interacts with real world issues and has no arbitrarily constructed disciplinary closure. However, they do present the compiler of a dictionary of sociology with considerable problems, not least the need to arrive at working criteria of inclusion and exclusion when no one set of criteria is likely to reflect all possible conceptions of the subject. It is important, therefore, to make clear what the criteria have been for this volume. Included are:

• major sociological terms and topic areas which have been central in the development of the subject or which are currently important, together with many more minor sociological terms;
• entries on other social science disciplines, including key terms from these disciplines where the terms have achieved a wide usage within sociology;
• entries on the most influential sociologists, and entries on major social theorists and philosophers whose influence on the subject has often been on a par with those whose disciplinary links are more explicitly with sociology;
• entries on the main research methods used in sociology, including basic statistical terms, together with entries on epistemological and ontological terms and issues which sociology shares withphilosophy;
• a selection of frequently used ‘common language’ terms in sociology where these are likely to present problems for students.

sociology, n. (a term coined by COMPTE) the scientific and, more particularly, the positivistic, study of society (see Positivism). Since then, however, the term has gained a far wider currency to refer to the systematic study of the functioning, organization, development, and se of human societies, without this implying any particular model of ‘science’. In some usage, the term can also encompass approaches which explicitly repudiate the relevance of a ‘physical science’ orientation to social study.

• it fails to distinguish sociology from social science in general;
• it fails to distinguish sociology from other, less generalist, social sciences.

David Jary, BSc (Econ.) is Professor and Dean of School of Social Sciences at Staffordshire Univerity. Previously he was Senior Lecturer in Sociology as the University of Salford, and before that he was subject leader in Sociology at Manchester Polytechnic. His previously edited works include The Middle Class in Politics (with J. Garrard, M. Goldsmith and A. Oldfield), Sport, Leisure and Social Relations (with J. Horne and A. Tomlinson) and Giddens’ Theory of Structuration (with C. Bryant).

Julia Jary, BSc (Soc.), BA, MA, PhD is senior lecturer in Psychology at Staffordshire University and also teaches general psychology and cognitive psychology for the Open University. Previously she has worked as a lecturer at the Universities of Manchester and Salford.