Sociology
Sociology is the study of society as an integrated system and of individual social institutions, processes, and groups viewed in their connection with society as a whole. An essential precondition of sociological knowledge is the view of society as an interconnected entity “and not as something mechanically concatenated and therefore permitting all sorts of arbitrary combinations of separate social elements”.[1]
In contrast to utopian and idealist theories, which construct abstract models of an ideal society, sociology scientifically studies actual social relationships and predicts their development in order to utilize the knowledge obtained for the management of social processes. However, an understanding of social systems and of their elements, structure, and the laws under which they function and develop, differ in Marxist and bourgeois sociology. These differences are philosophic, based on specific class interests; they influence the selection of the subjects and methods of research and the relationships between sociology and other sciences dealing with man and society.[2]