Category talk:Sociology

A great article, but it needs more information and and different sectionsAbbadisaleh (talk) 23:58, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

unsigned comment
i would like to start some ideas here on some issues in todays world. >> maybe war? this article could have more information and sections. Abbadisaleh (talk) 23:52, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Cleanup request
This category has too many articles; they need to be sorted into new subcategories. -- Beland 23:03, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Agreed. See Talk:Sociology/Archive. All talk before December 21, 2008.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 21:33, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
 * Have begun this task by creating 10 main subcategories and sorting various articles into them (see below). It still needs a lot of work, to go through the remaining articles and move them into the appropriate category, as well as coming up with some more logical subcategories. Some suggestions have been made below and also on Talk:Sociology. I have also created Category:Articles not related to sociology to help clear them out of here if they don't belong. See here for discussion of tasks on WikiProject Sociology. JenLouise 02:54, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Sub categories
Is it usual for sub catgeories to be spread across different pages by the letters of listed articles below rather than being in their own list? It makes it very hard to understand what subcategories there are. Also is there any way of putting an alphabet listing the pages so you can jump to articles starting with S or something? JenLouise 00:03, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
 * If you want all subcategories to be forced to be on the first page on Cat:Sociology, you need to edit them to the following form: . Similarly if you want an article on, let's say, structural functionalism, to be listed not at s but at f in a given category, you would edit it to say  . As for alphabet listing of cats, I think you mean something like compactTOC? I am not sure if this can be done, perhaps you should ask at Categories.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 04:20, 20 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Are people likely to have problems with me moving all the subcategories to the first page? To me it just makes much more sense to be able to see all of the subcategories immediately. Especially once our subcategories are systematic. JenLouise 01:52, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I can't disagree with that.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 15:20, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I have moved some sociology sub categories to the top of the list. These are generic subcategories, such as Branches of sociology or Sociology books. I think non-generic ones are fine in alphabetical order. I have used, etc to order them. JenLouise 05:02, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Discussion of proposed changes

 * Sounds good, let's start cleaning this up. However I am not happy with the 'Sociological Organisation' name (aren't all organizations sociological?). Perhaps 'Organizations of sociologists' or 'Sociological associations' or 'Sociological research organizations' would be better...--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 04:23, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Yes Associations was the word I was looking for. I have changed it above. And perhaps it should be Sociological Associations and Journals, considering the only article on a journal, is the journal of an association listed. And sociology journals are usually put out by sociology associations . JenLouise 05:38, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Actually we alread have Category:Sociology journals and there are quite a few publications (many more not yet even stubbed on Wiki).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 15:23, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I broadly concur with the suggested changes, but would add some quick thoughts: -- zzuuzz (talk) 01:21, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Please ensure lower case names where appropriate
 * I think there may be a place for Category:Social research or the less likely Sociological research, which should relate somehow to research methodology. Category:Social sciences should be considered - for example Category:Social sciences methodology exists.
 * There is a question of whether to have Category:Social theories or Category:Sociological theories - I think the latter for most things, but the former has also been suggested.
 * I think you may have confused (as I started doing) Category:Branches of sociology and Category:Sociological theories. I think sociology of education should be a branch, whereas Positivism, (Structural) Functionalism etc should be theories. There is a really fine line which I think it would be useful to clarify if possible. For example, to which category do Feminism and Marxism belong, and why? I feel that Sociology of gender is a branch, but feminism and especially Marxism are theories which can be used by many other branches. But equally they may not be just theories. Then what is the Frankfurt School?
 * An association is different from an institute. I wonder if institutions (ie research centers) should be kept seperate from professional organisations (associations).
 * I have wondered if there might be a use for a Category:Social stratification, or Category:Social class, or something similar.

I agree that all the "sociology of" categories can be considered branches of sociology, rather than distinct theories, but I think we need to distinguish between paradigms, theories, and methods. Paradigms are the larger discourses/contexts in which theories are applied, e.g., structural functionalism is a paradigm, not a theory, because it is ontological and determines what theories are possible - i.e., ones that focus on social cohesion and consensus. A functionalist theory would be that society progresses from pre-modern mechanical solidarity to modern organic solidarity because of the division of labour. For functionalism, positivism is a method, not a theory explaining the way the social world works. Assuming that "social facts" are the right units of analysis, or that populations are the right level of analysis, doesn't tell us anything about the type of facts we would expect to see under certain historical and social conditions, nor about what phenomena are present and associated with those populations. There's lots of discussion on this in sections below, but I thought I'd add a note in this context. --Michael 21:11, 6 June 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikem1234 (talk • contribs)


 * Have changed all proposed names to be lower case
 * I am happy for articles under Methodological/research methods to be include in Category:Social sciences methodology.
 * I defintely believe that sociological theories should be kept distinct from social theories. To me social theory is a much broader than sociology and interdisciplinary.
 * I guess some definition around Branches/Theories etc needs to happen before changes are made. I agree with what you say about the distinction between sociology of education and functionalism, and am happy to go with branches being defined around areas of subject matter, however I disagree that functionalism, marxism etc then become theories. I suppose I would define them as Sociological perspectives. Wikipedia has an article on sociological paradigms but relates that to research, whereas in the context that it has always been used in the study I have done (across a few different universities in Australia) a sociological perspective represents a broad way of approaching the subject matter. If you want to call them paradigms then I think we'd have to rewrite/expand that article somewhat. Anyway, whatever this category is to be called, I think it should remain distinct from Sociological theories because a perspective/paradigm can incorporate a number of different sometime conflicting theories. If we go with paradigm, then for thinks like the Frankfurt School, it would become The Frankfurt School of Thought as a broad way of approaching something. If you want to approach it this way, then there are a whole host of articles already in the Branches category that needs to be reclassified.
 * In terms of the organisations/associations/institutes, whatever the category is called, I think it should remain one catgeory. I originally used the term organisation because to me that is the most generic and common word, association and institute are both more specific and narrow in definition. I don't agree with Piotrus that all organisations are sociological (sociological, being of or related to sociology, which is the study of the social/society, etc) so only organisations that are related to the study of the social/society are sociological. At this stage there doesn't seem to be very many, so perhaps we can put a paragraph at the top of the category page which makes the distinction and later on create two separate sub categories if necessary.
 * There is already a Category:Social classes.
 * On a different note, I am going to remove the pages specified above as not belonging to the sociology category, but leave a note on their talk page. JenLouise 03:10, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Making changes
I would like to go ahead and create the proposed categories above (shown in red). What do people think? JenLouise 04:37, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Well I will begin doing so and if anyone objects we can make changes. JenLouise 23:11, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Have made the changes as proposed before, but deleted them now from this page. To see it please refer to the old version of this page. The following categories have been created and the various articles moved into them:


 * Branches of sociology
 * Branches of sociology (interdisciplinary)
 * Sociological paradigms
 * Sociological theories
 * Sociological terms
 * Social sciences methodology
 * Sociologists
 * Sociology books
 * Sociology journals
 * Sociology magazines
 * Sociological organisations

These categories appear at the beginning of the sub categories list at Category:Sociology because I have numbered them [[:Category:Sociology| 01] to [[:Category:Sociology| 10].

The only change I have not made is the creation of the category Category:Sociological Organisations because there was some discussion over the appropriate name for this category. Hopefully interested people can continue the discussion so that we can arrive at consensus and create this category.
 * Category:Sociological organisations seems like a good name. We can sub-categorise institutions, associations, etc as necessary. -- zzuuzz (talk) 00:11, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Done ! JenLouise 06:37, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Biosocial Theory
Can this be added to the list? I would assume that it fits...Silver seren 15:36, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Be bold...--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 15:59, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I would, but when I try to edit...it looks weird. O_o So I can't find the place it goes in...Silver seren 16:07, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Paradigms vs theories
this information is relevant to the article but i feel that it could have more sections with details to it Abbadisaleh (talk) 23:34, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

The following is copied from a discussion at Talk:Sociological paradigm. everything is relevant to the topic but there could be smoemore details and different sections.68.133.45.126 (talk) 23:32, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

I boldly redirected the sociological paradigms page to sociological theory (which was previously a short stub) and copied the content from this article there. Sociological theory is the more common term. --Reswik
 * It was pretty bold! I think some discussion should happen first! There was a very long and detailed discussion on the Category talk:Sociology page around terms when the categories for the sociolgy category was put together. If you have a look at Category:Sociological paradigms and Category:Sociological theories you will see that your name change does not reflect the discussion and consensus reached on how to term these categories. It was decided that a "theory" is actually a hypothesis, whereas, as you correctly say in the introduction the things below are frameworks and were eventually decided to be called sociological paradigms. I'm going to chance it back for now, because otherwise there is a huge disparity between the categorisation system and this one page, but maybe we can discuss this further and eventually come to some agreement? JenLouise 02:29, 27 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Hi (sorry that this rambles on a bit--better to get thoughts out then let em slip away?), I looked at the discussions on the category:sociology page. I may have missed something, but the point raised there about paradigms does not seem so much discussed at length as much as one point amidst a number of other points made by two people. I do agree that it would be ideal for the usage of "paradigm" and "theory" to be consistent.
 * Some thoughts: Theory does not only mean a hypothesis. Theory as in "social theory" can means a body of thought that can be narrow in range or very broad in scope -- broader even than a paradigm. "Paradigm" is not as commonly used a word as is "theory" in referring to groupings of sociological thought. I do not think paradigm is term that is more accurate than theory for a body of sociological thought. "Paradigm" sounds a bit like a POV way of using a Kuhnian kind of strategy to organize things -- rather than a description of the thought out there. (I know that is not intent, but it sounds like it.) Anyway, some broad theories in soc may be paradigmatic in scope/import and others not so. For the list on the page linked here, I think sociological theory is a better term.  In various "Sociological theory" texts, the theories are discussed as theories that have different scopes and purposes -- and not necessarily as paradigms. However, some theorists (like Ritzer) do meta-theory and define various paradigms or basic meta-theoretical content that inform sociological thought. A WP article about that and what other thinkers have noted in terms of very broad paradigms across and running through social/sociological theories would be a good use for a sociological paradigm page -- not the current content I think.  One could bring in then the Kuhnian sense of the term also and discuss the historicity (in a sociology of knowledge vein) of various dominant types of theories over time too (or another article might be needed for that). However, in summary: to label sociological theory as "paradigms" seems inaccurate and it seems rather POV in adopting one framework that entails a view of the nature of theory (that others might well object to -- but that problem is going to be there with any overarching scheme or term). In the current context I think it would be good to maintain the redirect -- after perhaps editing the page to outline what a discussion of paradigms in sociology could look like.  Note that I do think that looking at theory in terms of paradigms is interesting, even important.
 * On a related tangent: a discussion to have hopefully sooner than later is whether to have maintain articles for both sociological theory and social theory or just for social theory. I would argue for having both articles as there are distinctions. In an encyclopedia, many fields have a stake in social theory. At the same time, there are a number of well defined and recognized sociological theories.  --Reswik 03:25, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
 * To be honest, I don't really mind what things are called, but I do think that consistency is important. There is no point having a category called sociological paradigms and one called sociological theories and then having the same-titled articles contradicting these categories (I'm pretty sure that's what you agreed with before) so my suggestion then, would be to leave this article under paradigm just for the moment, and then initiate the discussion on the sociological categories page with a note about it on the sociology page. Once a decision is reached there you can apply that decision to this content. Personally I agree that the general usage of theory is as you suggest, however there are distinctions to be made and it is not clear how to maintain the distinction. For instance, marxism can be considered a theory in a way, however i beleive its much more accurate to say that the term marxism covers a broad range of theories. Marxism is a paradigm under which come a number of specific theories. Similarly feminism, functionalism, etc, etc.


 * I think this distinction is important and this is what those of us that participated in the sociological category debate decided. (yes only two people were part of the discussion specifically, but many more read and felt no need to comment against the decisions reached.) If we can come up with a better way, then by all means! JenLouise 04:36, 27 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Perhaps Sociological Disciplines or Sociological Traditions would be better than sociological paradigms? JenLouise 05:57, 27 April 2007 (UTC)


 * (Some of the following restates a few points you've made. Just looking more at this use of paradigm...) Well, it seems like this is a good place to talk about sociological paradigms vs. theory in terms of article titles. Perhaps it is a different issue to talk about category labels. It seems to me that in addition to "theory" that "framework" or "perspective" could be used as a term to refer to a wide range of theory/theories. I don't think paradigm works in that way. A paradigm is a broad topic that has some consensus, usually. There are narrow theories and wider general groups of theory - just like sets, small sets, big sets. Marxism is not a paradigm -- there are dialetical marxisms, economic determinist marxisms, cultural marxisms, feminist marxisms, etc. Same for feminism -- a diverse array of non-paradigmatic theories. So, I don't think we should use paradigm in this sense -- to group types of theory.


 * Further, there are multiple dimensions of theory. A theory can be neomarxist, feminist, social constructionist, and postmodern at once. A theory can be partly functionalist and partly interactionist. Paradigm as a term does not seem to allow a flexibility in grouping differing theories in various ways.


 * Another issue: In the kuhnian sense, there may have only been a few sociological paradigms in certain contexts (such as perhaps structural functionalism in the 50s in the USA or perhaps Marxism in the former soviet sphere)-- not many sociological theories have been paradigmatic in the kuhnian sense. --Reswik 05:18, 27 April 2007 (UTC)


 * So. For several reasons, I think a better solution here might be one of two options:
 * First option: collapse sociological theory and sociological paradigms into the term social theory. All of this is social theory. Theories can be specific and general. I don't know if this is an ideal solution. It is simpler. I prefer the next option.
 * Second option: replace "sociological paradigms" with "social theory" or "social theory (sociology)". Why? 1) In origins and often currently, sociological theory is a subset of, and relies very much on, a wide range of cross-/inter-disciplinary social theory. 2) Sociologists use interdisciplinary social theory extensively. 3) Sociological theory and social theory are sometimes conflated but social theory is the more encompassing term that includes marxism, feminism, etc. (These later should not be labelled as sociological paradigms, due to the meaning of "sociological" and "paradigms".) --Reswik 17:44, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm keeping this discussion string intact: we do not have a debate -- I agree on this. I overstated -- it is a snap shot of my thinking at one point in considering this. -- Reswik
 * With regard to this suggestion regarding social theory, I don't think that is appropriate at all. Social theory is very much an inter-disciplinary field I agree, it cross cultural theory, sociology, anthropology and many more. However, Sociology is quite distinct from social theory as a discipline, although there may be cross-over at a more detailed level among some of the particular theories. I don't think it would be appropriate to rename other discplines's pages (eg. anthropology, cultural theory, etc) as Social theory (anthropology), social theory (cultural theory) etc, and so I don't think merging sociological theories and social theories is appropriate. JenLouise 06:08, 30 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree that we should keep sociological theory. I was considering arguements why we might use "social theory". In the discipline (journals, etc.) and many graduate programs, social theory is what sociological theory is called, though sociological theory is also used as an umbrella term. In practice in sociology, social theory is not distinct from sociological theory (see texts refed in the theory section of the main sociology article). However, in the context of an encyclopedia including general theory articles by many social sciences, we do need the distinction. So, I agree to go with sociological theory. --13:44, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I understand what you're saying, but unfortunately I don't agree. I think it is important to keep the distinction between the two articles. I do think this is related to the category labels because each of these articles (paradigms and theories) are the main pages for the two categories. Therefore, there must be consistency. As I said I'm not particularly attached to the term paradigm, just the distinction, hence I proposed sociological traditions as an alternative to sociological paradigms. I think the difference between a "tradition" and a "theory" is much clearer.

We don't seem to be getting much closer to agreeing, so perhaps we need to get other people in on the tpic to see what other people think. I'll post a note on the Talk:Sociology page and on a couple of user's pages and see if we can get more people. I also think that we should split this debate into two: paradigms vs. theories and sociology vs. social theory as I think they are two very separate issues. JenLouise 03:56, 30 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Actually, I agree with using sociological theory as a term. I was rehersing arguments above, making sure this issue was addressed, and overstated my opinion of the case. There doesn't need to be a debate about that point (at least between you and I), nor do I wish to dwell on that at this time. So, I'm moved my comment (that you had moved) and your comment about that back into the string above. I think we don't need a separate discussion string when there isn't a disagreement on that point. --Reswik 13:47, 30 April 2007 (UTC)


 * On the matter of pardigm/tradition vs. theory: Perhaps we haven't considered enough how to clarify and sythensize our concerns & evaluations yet. I'm still not sure why two categories for types or scale of theory are needed. What are the key reason(s) for having this distinction in categories? :If two categories are needed, perhaps something like "frameworks" or "perspectives" might work better than tradition (some of these "traditions" are relatively new and/or not well adopted in sociology). Another naming option that might address a two part categorization is "general theory" and "specific theory". More input from others is welcome.  --Reswik 13:47, 30 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Is it ok to table the discussion of the relationship of theory/paradigm until the following is addressed? I'd like to work with applying the categories of sociological "term" and "theory" and figure out how to use the new category you proposed of "topic" relates to term. See my reply to your new string immediately below. Figuring out how to sort these more basic term/topic categories may somehow help shed light on the above. --Reswik 18:00, 30 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I think framework or perspective will work better than "general theory" and "specific theory". When I first learnt sociology, I was introduced to these broad ways of approaching sociology as sociology perpsectives, and that was actually my first choice (before paradigms was introduced). However when I started using this term in this way it was changed a number of times, because on Wikipedia this term was referring to THE Sociological perspective, a usage that I have now come into contact with a number of times in textbooks, etc. However I would be happy to use "Sociological perspectives" instead of paradigms and just to have both definitions in the article as they are both valid usages.


 * In fact if we did this (ie. merged the current Sociological paradigm article with Sociological perspective and replaced all instances on "paradigm" with "perspective" in the various articles, then I guess I don't really mind if Category:Sociological paradigms is just deleted, and all of "perspectives/frameworks" become sub-categories of Category:Sociological theories. Although I think this would need to be explained in the lead paragraph for the category. Is there anyone who is particularly attached to the two separate categories? JenLouise 03:58, 1 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I prefer this last option of merging content you mention with subcats (general/specific) of a main theory cat. In a bit: What if we summarize the categorization and article options in a new comment section here and put a call for comment on the Wikiproject Soc page and realted theory article pages? But, before we do that: I wonder if perhaps there are any other revisions in main categories or new main categories to call for input about? (See my comment in the section below where I suggest a page of definitions of categories. Do we have one?) In the process of looking at defining categories, other issues about categories may emerge.
 * Perhaps it makes sense to look over the category system (and invite others to do so now). Then we could see if there are other issues to discuss (and hence choices to make) before making a call out on the particular choice above? It could be a good group project do some evaluation, refinement, explanation, and consensus building around the category structure -- at least as much as could be done practically -- over a few weeks or months at this time (with more than 2 participants hopefully :). Or, do you think that is not needed? -- Reswik 15:24, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that reviews of things like the categories can always be useful, but if we put on hold other discussions/decisions or try and do the review all at once it just means that we are left with the status quo for a little bit longer. I would suggest putting notes at various places about the current topics and inviting people to review the other categories as well, if they wish. That means that we can kind of tackle the first issue we had and get it resolved before moving onto a fairly large scale review. I think alot of people probably wouldn't be interested in just going straight to an overall review because of the time, etc, required, when there are other pressing matters to attend to (such as what to do with the Sociological paradigm article).

In our little debate, we've gone all over the place, and I like you're idea of summarising things. I would suggest that we work out what the real issues are, what our agreed (or not) suggestions are and then present these in a separate thread below, inviting people to give their input. If people really want to read this all over-the-place discussion, then nothing is stopping them, but it is not really necessary to come to a decision. So I propose to use the draft as the start of a new (cleaner) discussion and, once we're happy with the draft, move it to its own new thread and link to it from Talk:Sociology, Sociological paradigm, Sociological perspective, WikiProject Sociology and anywhere else you suggest.

I've made the following draft for the new thread from the debate above, but please correct and clarify where you see fit! JenLouise 05:19, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

(to be moved to own thread once agreed)

The issue: Sociological paradigm is not the most appropriate title for the content appearing on the page.

"Paradigm" is not a term that is accurate for a body of sociological thought. Some broad theories in sociology may be paradigmatic in scope/import and others not so. A paradigm is a broad topic that has some consensus, usually. Marxism is not a paradigm -- there are dialetical marxisms, economic determinist marxisms, cultural marxisms, feminist marxisms, etc. Same for feminism -- a diverse array of non-paradigmatic theories. So, I don't think we should use paradigm in this sense -- to group types of theory.

However a distinction between particular sociological theories and broad ways of approaching sociology is needed. Other possibilities instead of "paradigm" include sociological disciplines, sociological traditions, sociological perspectives. Also, a category currently exists called Category:Sociological paradigms. If the term was changed in the article it would need to be changed in the category for consistency's sake.
 * "Discilpines" - Too easily confused with disciplines in the sense of economics, history, sociology, etc.
 * "Traditions" - Some of the things being classed here are relatively new and/or not well adopted in sociology
 * "Perspectives" - When I first learnt sociology, I was introduced to these broad ways of approaching sociology as sociological perpsectives, and that was actually the term I used(before paradigms was introduced). However when I started using this term in this way it was changed a number of times, because on Wikipedia this term was referring to The Sociological Perspective, a usage that I have now come into contact with a number of times in textbooks, etc. However I would be happy to use "Sociological perspectives" instead of paradigms and just to have both definitions in the article as they are both valid usages.
 * The overlap between Category:Sociological theories and Category:Sociological paradigms is so great that the distinction may not be necessary in terms of the categories. All article could be classified under "Sociological theories" with sub-categories for any paradigm/perspective, etc that has a number of articles related to it.

Proposed solution:
 * 1) Using "What links here" on Sociological paradigm change instances of the word paradigm to "Sociological perspective" as appropriate for each article
 * 2) Merge the content of Sociological paradigm with Sociological perspective
 * 3) Create a stub article on Sociological paradigm based on Reswick's points above.
 * 4) Reclassify all articles in Category:Sociological paradigms to Category:Sociological theories
 * 5) Create subcategories in Category:Sociological theories for the perspectives and add category tag to articles
 * 6) Delete Category:Sociological paradigms


 * I agree, broadly speaking. Ultimately, wikipedia is very confused by all these similar and informal articles (social theory; sociological theory; social relations; sociological paradigm, and so on), most of which only do a poor version of the same job as subfields of sociology and outline of sociology, providing an amateurish and unreferenced summary of the entire discipline. The fact that everybody's efforts are being milked through multiple pages is clearly an issue. The fewer pages the better. I would support the deletion of either sociological paradigm or sociological theory, with the merger of the best information from whichever page adequately incorporated. --Tomsega (talk) 17:20, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Clean up still needed!
This category still has 178 articles sitting in the main area and most of the ones I have looked at have little or no relationship to sociology.

It would be great for anyone who had even a couple of minutes, just to pick a couple of articles at random and classify them properly. JenLouise 05:19, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Suggestions: If people can think of other categories that could be created then please suggest them!
 * For instance, any articles on organisations/groups that are non-profit or community groups or the like that don't actually do sociology could be reclassified under Category:Non-profit organizations.
 * Create a Category:Sociology topics and put in here all articles that relate to things that are studied by sociology but that do not necessarily contain any sociological theory in the article.

Also, this may be obvious, but if you find a more suitable category for an article in the main area of Category:Sociology don't forget to remove the tag. JenLouise 06:16, 30 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm working now on categorization of some sociology articles in the main sociology category space. Some of the largest sociology categories are sociological terms and theories. How do you think "Sociological topics" should be used in relation to "terms". FYI: As a sort of clean up excercise, I went through the list of sociology topics page (hundreds of items) a few months ago. There are a fair number of not specifically sociological topics there. I left most in the list. Another thing to consider here is how to reconcile the inclusion of terms in the list of topics page and in categories. Should the categorization work be considered primary in this -- with a note left on the list page (and wikiproject) about that? In other words, clean up categories -- then clean up the topic list page? --Reswik 18:07, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * What I meant by Sociology topics was in relation to the way I thought the term was used in proposed new draft of Sociology i.e. topics that are studied in sociology, eg. family, social class, religion, etc, where the article itself in not actually about "Sociology of the family" but jsut about "family". Personally I don't think these pages should be in here at all, but there are heaps of them, eg. Aggression, Altruism, Attitude (psychology), Average Joe, jsut to pick a few from "A". JenLouise 03:25, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Thx for explaining. Is there something of an overlap then between meaning of "topic" and "term" (since terms can signify topics?). (It is ok for categories to overlap--unavoidable i guess.) I wonder: Would it be helpful to compile a list (at Wikiproject Sociology perhaps and linked on the main cate pages) of definitions of categories (with examples) might be a helpful guide to categorization. Would a diagram of hierarchical tree(s) be helpful?  Perhaps we have more than one tree present in these categories: a subdiscipline tree; A theory tree (perspective-general/subdiscipline/very specific); a topic/subtopic/minor-topic tree, etc.  (Or, is there a definition of the categories collected somewhere already?)
 * On specific articles: Aggression and Altruism have social sociological subsections and subsections from other fields. These are interdisciplinary articles.  (Other examples are Education and Law.) I wonder: Does it make sense to have a category "Interdisciplinary topics" (which could be very huge), so that we can keep track of the many articles (at least on major topics) where Sociological content is included? That is, some interdisciplinary articles will probably need reviews and revisions in an ongoing way.  -- Reswik 14:45, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Responding to each point in turn: Sorry that's a bit all over the place. JenLouise 04:33, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
 * The use of Sociolgoical terms is meant to imply terminology, that is terminology that is directly related to sociology. So "attitude" would not be considered a sociological term, it is not terminology, just a concept that is studied in sociology. Therefore I think that overlap would be rare, and, as you pointed out, it always going to be inevitable.
 * I think descriptions and heirarchy would be awesome - the difficulty is where to put these things. We can't actually have an article on the Sociology Category.
 * We could possibly create a sub-page of the WIkiProject Sociology page (or even this page) for this information and link to it from various places.
 * I think a description of each category could go in the introduction to the main Category:Sociology page if it could be very short. This would probably be a good idea in addition to a detailed page as suggested above.
 * I don't think we need to distinguish between sociology topics and interdisicplinary topics. I think it could be made fairly obvious that topics studied in sociology are also studied in other disciplines.
 * In terms of keeping track of sociology bits of these articles, one way to do this (depending on the amount of information available) is to create a new page called "Whatever (sociology)", transfer the information out of the original article onto this page, and then create a summary and main-article tag for the original article. The more concise "Whatever (sociology)" page can easily be kept track of, and the links back to the general articles are easily managed through the "What links here" link for the sociology article (as is the case with Education and Law). Where there is very little text, it probably just is even worth worrying about on a large scale, and just leaving it to the individuals who are particularly concerned with those specific topics to look up the existing articles. For instance, the articles you've mentioned, although they have the headings, they don't actually seem to have any particular sociological theories or discussions, so they are probably not worth worrying about.
 * The other thing is, that if we get really good at classifying everything into one of the existing subcategories, maybe we can just have all the "topics" unclassified.

New discussion on subcategories - Feb 2012
This matter has been raised on the Sociology project page. Having briefly read previous discussions above, I suppose one could create new subcategories for Category:Methods in sociology to complement the existing Category:Sociological_theories. There might also be a subcategory Category:Applied sociology, for something more specific than 'Sociology topics'. This subcategory could itself be subcategorized. Along with other existing subcategories, this might serve to weed out articles a bit more. Open to further discussion. Meclee (talk) 04:29, 11 February 2012 (UTC) Thinking out loud: Category:Sociology in action for pages like: Bud_Billiken_Club... Meclee (talk) 04:53, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Tentatively support, with the exception of sociology in action, which seems simply a different name for applied sociology. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; talk to me 18:19, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Category:Methods in sociology should really replace Category:Social sciences methodology directly in Category:Sociology Brad7777 (talk) 16:49, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

The 'Sociological terms' category page states "This category relates to sociological terms as opposed to sociological concepts." What is the reason that this subcategory cannot include both terms and concepts? Meclee (talk) 23:27, 11 February 2012 (UTC) Meclee (talk) 23:29, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Im not sure on the difference between the two, all terms represent concepts as far as i am aware Brad7777 (talk) 16:49, 28 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Created Category:Methods in sociology and Category:Applied sociology. Proposed mapping of 1st level subcategories can be found here: User:Meclee/proj4-sandbox Meclee (talk) 20:14, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Diffusion of Category - March 2012
A diffusion of the Sociology category has been completed. In addition to listing several interdisciplinary categories (e.g., Category:Aging, Category:Race) as subcategories, as well as sociology-related categories not previously listed as subcategories (e.g., Category:Socialization), several new 1st level categories have been created, including:


 * Category:Deviance and social control


 * Category:Methods in sociology


 * Category:Social problems


 * Category:Social status


 * Category:Urbanization

In addition, several existing and new categories were added to various 1st level subcategories. To facilitate browsing of subcategories, the page Sociology category tree was created. This uses a MW tag, so should be self-updating. Any disputed category may be discussed in accordance with WP:CFD. Meclee (talk) 15:32, 29 March 2012 (UTC)