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What is background information?
Background information provides basic facts, history, descriptions and concepts about your topic. Use only the information that you find useful in starting your research. You can always return to your sources if you need more in-depth information as you get deeper into your research topic.
What is Sociology?
What is Sociology? "Scientific study of human social behavior. As the study of humans in their collective aspect, sociology is concerned with all group activities—economic, social, political, and religious. Sociologists study such areas as bureaucracy, community, deviant behavior, family, public opinion, social change, social mobility, social stratification, and such specific problems as crime, divorce, child abuse, and substance addiction. Sociology tries to determine the laws governing human behavior in social contexts; it is sometimes distinguished as a general social science from the special social sciences, such as economics and political science, which confine themselves to a selected group of social facts or relations."
"sociology." The Columbia Encyclopedia. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Credo Reference. Web. 05 July 2011.
Sociology Topics and Theorists
It is important to know that sociology is a very broad and changing field: there are more than 100 specialty fields.
Among the traditional sub-fields of sociology are:
- political sociology
- educational sociology
- rural sociology
- urban sociology
- criminology
- occupational sociology
Examples of newer sub-fields are:
- environmental sociology
- digital sociology
- sociology of sports and leisure
- military sociology
- medical sociology
- sociology of food and eating
- sociology of emotions
Famous Sociologists:
- Auguste Comte (1798-1857)
- Durkheim, David EĢmile (1858-1917)
- Karl Marx (1818-1883)
- Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)
- Max Weber (1864 - 1920)
Recommended databases for background information
Begin your research by looking up your keywords in an online dictionary, encyclopedia or reference book.
Identify articles in scholarly journals or popular magazines by looking up your search terms in one of the selected databases below.
You also can find a complete list of online databases organized by subject on the Library's A-Z List of Databases.
Use your Oakton username and password to login from a non-campus computer.
- CQ Researcher This link opens in a new windowEach issue examines a single "hot" topic with comments from experts, lawmakers and citizens on all sides of every issue. Includes charts, graphs and sidebar articles -- plus a pro-con feature, a chronology, lengthy bibliographies and a list of contacts.
- Credo Reference - All Subjects Search This link opens in a new windowContains dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries, thesauri, encyclopedias, quotations and atlases, plus a wide range of subject-specific titles. Among the sociology specific books are: Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology, The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology, World of Sociology by Gale, The Blackwell Dictionary of Sociology, and books from the Contemporary World Issues Series.
- Gale Virtual Reference Library This link opens in a new windoweBook editions of Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Encyclopaedia Judaica, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, and International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences.
- Social Problems -- Oxford Journals This link opens in a new windowSocial Problems presents scholarly articles offering critical perspectives on contemporary social issues as well as influential sociological findings and theories that have the ability to help us better understand and deal with our complex social environment.
- Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 This link opens in a new windowProvides a collection of books, images, documents, scholarly essays, commentaries, and bibliographies that document women's activism in American public life.
- Gender & Society (SAGE Journals) This link opens in a new windowPeer-reviewed, official journal of Sociologists for Women in Society; focused on the study of gender and gendered processes in interactions, organizations, societies, and global and transnational spaces.
- SocINDEX Full Text EBSCO This link opens in a new windowProvides more than 860 full-text titles including core sociology peer-reviewed journals.
- Opposing Viewpoints in Context This link opens in a new windowDatabase of contemporary social issues with content structured to promote critical-thinking skills. It contains reference book titles, pro and con viewpoint articles, and a variety of periodicals, podcasts, reviewed Web links, images, statistical tables, charts, and graphs.