Social Science

• Sociology: human behavior show regular and reoccurring riles. Humans are social beings.

• Role n status

o Role: the way someone is expected to behave in a certain position

o Status: identifiable social position by which society sees the individual

o A role is a certain behavior given the particular status of an individual before society.

• The social process: playing roles and achieving status creates or destroy social relationships

• Basic social processes:

o Associative processes: bring people together. Creates relationships. (amalgamation, accommodation, assimilation, innovation)

o Mixed processes: a combination of getting people together and apart. (Competition, Work specialization)

o Dissociative processes: separate people, brake up existing relationships(opposition, stratification, conflict, war, corruption)

• Social structures:

o Webs of relationships for practical reasons (units)

o Terminal product of the process

• Leopold von Wiese: Classification of social structure

o The masses

 Easiest to create

 Weakest

 Usually violent, individuals forget responsibility.

o Groups

 Family, neighborhood, classroom, teenagers, professionals.

o Corporations or associations

• Social dynamics

o Sociology uses it to explain the interrelationships.

o Theory of relationship: society is a process built around social happenings

o States of social dynamics

 Equilibrium: institutions, values an social structures are interrelated functionally

 Conflict: event that disturbs social equilibrium.(wars, strikes, opposition)

• Social happenings:

o Social process: the total of what happens with humans and their relationships and processes

o Social distance (holding back): psychic distance between humans.

 Teacher/student, officer/soldier, boss/employee

o Social space: space where social processes develop

o Social structure: the linked social relationships

• Social stratification: some groups are better than other. Old as society

o Occupational strata: income related

 Order: owners, professionals, employees, qualified workers, manual workers.

o Strata by domicile (urban or rural)

o Status

o Social class; most important social strata

• Economy: social science, studies human behavior oriented to production, distribution, circulation and consumption of wealth

o Microeconomics: behavior of individual and corporations as acting units in the economic field

o Macroeconomics: studies economics of larger units. Makes conclusions about growth and development of a country or region.

o Need: sensation of missing something

 Psychological, emotional, spiritual

 Unlimited in number, but limited in capacity

 Determined by the groups of which we are part of

 They continuously compete with each other

 They complement each other

o Satisfier: anything that extinguish the human need.

o The value problem: appreciation that each subject make of the capacity that a good or service has to satisfy its needs

 Failed theories:

• Law of exchange reciprocity

• Value-Work theory

• Scarcity or rarity

• Total cost, and, or replacement cost

 Theories that explain value subjectively

• The Austrian school: one´s man garbage is another man´s treasure

• Imputation theory: the value is assigned by people, meaning its subjective.

 Scarcity: nothing is free

• TINSTAAFL: there is no such thing as free lunch

• 3 questions:

o How to produce?

o What to produce?

o For whom to produce?

• Factors of production:

o Land

 Fixed or limited in supply

 + population= + scarcity

o Capital

 Result of production for practical reasons

• Capital good: tools, equipment, machinery and infrastructure

• Financial capital: money used to buy tools and equipment used in production

o Labor

 People, with their efforts, abilities and skills

o Entrepreneurs

 Innovators, creators of new sources of business

 Economic system

• Organization by which whom man search to produce, trade and consume a greater number of goods and services

• History

o Primitive communism

o Slavery

o Feudalism

o Capitalism

o Socialism

o Mixed systems: invalid

• Concerns

o What to produce?

o How to produce?

o For whom to produce?

o Why produce?

• Traditional:

o Based on cultural economies (indigenous communities)

o Disadvantages: no room for innovation

• Centrally planned economies

o A central authority makes decisions

o North korea and cuba

o Advantages: ability to change swiftly

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