Make up Week -2 Introduction to Sociology / Demography

1. Summary
Demographics, which deals with population, studies the distribution of the population and the changes of the population over time. Demographics was initially used for political purposes, such as examining the basis of taxation. However, demography is a powerful tool for explaining various social phenomena, so sociologists need to take advantage of it. Demographics analyzes birth rates, mortality rates, and population movements to identify changes in the population. Demography provides a meaningful interpretation of social patterns.

 The demographic transition, a related theory, accounts for changes in birth rate and mortality as the country's economy develops. This demographic analysis explains the causes and status of overpopulation or underpopulation. Furthermore, by explaining the impact of these situations, we spread awareness of the problem and provide solutions. On the other hand, as industrialization progressed, the urbanization phenomenon in which a large proportion of the population migrated to cities occurred worldwide. As a result, the city grows rapidly. According to demographics, urbanization rates vary by country. These various causes exist because, according to demographics, it is difficult to improve living standards in rural areas. These urbanization phenomena also affect the environment, such as causing urban heat islands. Not only that, it also affects the economy, such as deepening inequality according to class. As such, changes in population affect society as a whole. Therefore, analyzing the population through demographics can help sociologists study society.

2. Interest
It is interesting to note that race affects mortality. According to the findings in the article, whites live longer than blacks. Unfortunately, this is not because of the biological characteristics of the race itself, but because of other social imbalances such as income and education.

It is interesting that larger social networks affect mortality. It is interesting to note that many friend gatherings and close relationships with relatives have a positive effect on health. However, I would like to present a criticism that this is unlikely.

3. Discussion
-According to the article, analyzing the population through demographics will be a useful tool for sociologists to study society. What else might be useful besides the  examples of the article?

-According to the text, the change in population seems to be a useful tool to analyze society. What other tools can you use to analyze society?

-Is the population change natural? Is it an intended and planned change? Is it sociologically meaningful to distinguish these?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

W1-1 Why am I taking this class?

Probably, I expect most of the students taking this class will answer similarly. I am taking this class to enhance my English skills as well as to improve my social knowledge. However, since the name of this class is ‘ Invitation to Sociology ’ and the class is run in English, I am expecting to deal issues that are not only limited nationally, but also international issues, which might be hard to cover in other classes that run in Korean. I also guess that by using English to search information, I would be able to find much more information compared to researching in Korean. Therefore, by taking this class, I expect that I might be able to gain general understanding of the overall sociology and learn skills how to deal with the vast amount of the information to find the main point of the material.
Read more

Week 1-1. Introduction to Sociology

1. Summary  Sociology is the study of what activities and thoughts human beings have as members of society. They are also interested in the structure of society and have a welfare system in place From small to big, the areas that society deals with vary. Sociological imagination allows individuals to deviate from self-centered perspectives and view the world as a common entity. This can interest others in their situations and encourage them to directly address the problem. So sociology is the study of understanding social events, collecting, analyzing and studying empirical data.  2.  Interesting   I found the story of sociological imagination interesting. When a social event happened, even people who had no direct connection with it came forward and wondered about the phenomenon of anger and solidarity together, but when I learned about the concept of sociological imagination, my curiosity was solved a little bit. People seem to be able to see irra...
Read more

W2-2 Introduction to Sociology/Sociological Methods

A Short Summary of ‘ Introduction to Sociology/Sociological Methods’ This part of the book is about the methods employed in sociology and some standards of the methods and what it tells us. In scientific methods, there are four steps. Characterization, hypothesis, prediction and testing. For the best prediction in scientific methods, we need to know the correct relationship between correlation and causation. It is important not to mistake correlation and causation. Also, quantitative and qualitative methods are two different approaches of sociological research. Depending on how we approach, we can classify objective approach, critical approach and subjective approach. Overall, it is important to obey ethics. Something I learned after reading ‘ Introduction to Sociology/Sociological Methods’ What I found interesting was that even though sociology is in the Liberal Arts, it includes different scientific methods. And by using these methods, we can make predictions and expl...
Read more