Introduction: What is a Sociology?

SOCIETY: a group of people who live within some type of bounded territory and who share a common way of life.

CULTURE: is common way of life shared by a society or a group.

Sociology may be generally defined as a social science that studies such kinds of phenomena as:

• The structure and function of society as a system.
• The nature, complexity and contents of human social behaviour
• The fundamentals of human social life
• Interaction of human beings with their external environment
• The indispensability of social interactions for human development.
• How the social world affects us, etc.

A more formal definition of sociology:
      it is a social science which studies the processes and patterns of human individual and group interaction, the forms of organization of social groups, the relationship among them, and group influences of individual behavior, and vice versa, and the interaction between one social group and the other (Team of Experts, 2000)

Sociology is interested in how we as human beings interact with each other(the pattern of social interaction); the laws and principles that govern social relationship and interactions; the influence of the social world on the individuals

"Sociology is a debunking science"; that is, it looks for levels of reality other than those presented in official interpretations of society and people's common sense explanations of he social world. Sociologist are interested in understanding what is and do not make value judgements.

The major conditions, societal changes, upheavals and social ferments that gave rise to the emergence and development of sociology as an academics science include the Industrial Revolution which began in Great Britain, the French Political Revolution of 1789, the Enlightenment and advance in natural sciences and technology. These revolutions had brought about significant societal changes and disorders in the way society lived in the aforementioned countries. Since sociology was born amidst the great socio-political and economic and technological changes of the western world, it is said to be the science of modern society. Exciting sciences could not help understand, explain, analyzer and interpret the fundamentals laws that govern the social phenomena. Thus sociology was born out of these revolutionary context.