Sociology

What is Sociology?

Sociology is the study of society and social relationships. It allows us to understand individual problems in their proper social context and reflect upon the ways in which everyday life, such as family relationships, education, and work, are conditioned by forms of social organisation and social systems. For example, we may believe that our relationships with other people are absolutely about who we are, but for sociologists the way we relate to other people is characterised and conditioned by social norms and values about how we should behave in relation to other people. Similarly, we may imagine that the career we choose, and the amount of money we earn, is about our individual ability, but sociologists would argue that this it is conditioned by shifts in the economy and labour market which take place beyond one person's control. This is, of course, hard to see in everyday life because in our society we imagine that our fate is determined by our own individual behaviour.

The objective of sociology is to show us that nobody is an island and that our fates are inter-related. We live in society, which sociologists conceive as the social relations that make up our lives as family members, friends, neighbours, citizens of nations, and finally human beings. It is the object of sociology to study these different scales of sociability in order to allow us to understand why our lives and the lives of others are the way they are. However, sociology is not simply descriptive, and sociologists do not simply produce accounts of social systems. Sociology is also concerned to produce sociological accounts of individual problems by understanding the social roots of phenomenon such as divorce or unemployment. In this way, sociology is a diagnostic discipline. It diagnoses social problems with a view to critically analysing sociological conditions. In other words, we may ask why are there such high levels of unemployment in society and what it is about society and the labour market that means that people struggle to find work. In this respect sociology is also a critical discipline because it asks us to critically analyse society and social conditions in order to be able to understand why problems, such as unemployment, exist in the first place. Although critique is valuable for its own sake, because it is important to have critically engaged citizens in a democratic society, the final objective of sociology is to suggest productive interventions into social problems and design social policies that may make our society a better place.

In this way sociology comprises three phases (diagnosis, critique, and intervention) that require us to first, exercise our imaginations in order to understand individual problems sociologically; second, to think ethically and make judgements about fairness so that we can critically analyse social systems; and third, construct practical interventions that will make a real difference to people’s lives. It is this three phase approach to the study of society which makes sociology essential for the 21^st century when our world is more complex than ever before. It is this three phase approach to sociology which informs the practice of the discipline at Keele.

Visit The British Sociological Association website for more about this topic.

What We Offer

Sociology Programmes

We offer 3 routes through the Sociology degree: Single Honours, Major / Minor, and Dual Honours.

Single Honours

Although you can take all of your modules from within Sociology if you wish, with the Single Honours Programme students are able to pursue their core subject while maintaining the flexibity to choose modules from other disciplines. For example you might want to learn a language or try out modules from a cognate subject such as Criminology, Psychology, or Media, Communications, and Culture.

Major /Minor

The Major route in Sociology offers students the opportunity to take most of their modules from within the sociology programme, yet have a Minor route named on their degree outcome. As with the Dual or Single Honours routes, students maintain the option to pursue a language or try out modules from other disciplines.

Dual Honours

The Dual Honours programme allows students to combine Sociology with another subject. Because of the flexible nature of the degree programmes at Keele you will be able to build the degree course that suits your particular interests and way of learning.

Media, Communications and Culture (Dual Honours)

We also co-teach the MCC programme alongside colleagues in Humanities.

Our Electives

• Globalisation
• Parenting and Childhood
• Families and Domestic Life
• Health
• The Body
• Media and Culture
• Digital Media
• Gender and Sexuality
• Utopias and Dystopias
• Sport
• Witchcraft
• Conspiracy Theory
• The City
• Ethnicities
• Psychoanalysis
• Consumption

History of Sociology at Keele

Sociology at Keele has a long and distinguished history. The Department was formed in the 1960s by the social anthropologist Professor Ronnie Frankenberg who famously wrote ‘Village on the Border’ on decision making processes in a Welsh village and ‘Communities in Britain’. Frankenberg was a member of the Manchester School of Social Anthropology and a student of Max Gluckman who is most famous for his work, ‘Custom and Conflict in Africa’, and his contribution to conflict theory. On the basis of this foundation, Keele Sociology has always had a strong tradition of inter-disciplinarity and a particular interest in the fields of anthropology, community and family studies, and cultural sociology. This history informs the focus of the current Sociology group, which is centrally concerned with charting contemporary cultural social change through a range of theoretical approaches. Apart from its anthropological and cultural focus, Sociology at Keele has historically adopted an innovative, student-centred, approach to learning and teaching. In the 1970s the Department adopted an elective system that entailed students designing their own option modules which tutors would then lead. The philosophy behind this approach to teaching and learning, which ensured that course content was in line with student interest and concerned with cutting edge concerns in the discipline, still informs the design of the Sociology programme at Keele today. Centrally, we are concerned with understanding contemporary social events through cutting edge research and upholding the tradition of innovation that is embedded in the history of Sociology at Keele.  

Keele University also hosts the prestigious journal, The Sociological Review, one of the longest running Sociology journals in the world, and holds the Foundations of British Sociology archive. This is a unique resource held in Keele University Library’s Special Collections and Archives. The material dates from the 1880s to the 1950s and consists of papers from the Sociological Society, LePlay House, the Institute of Sociology and several smaller subsidiary groups - all part of the early sociology movement in Britain.