The 12 branches of the Social Sciences.

The social sciences are divided into branches, differentiated fields of knowledge.
The main interest of social sciences is to study social behavior.
human. More specifically, the social sciences study subjectivity and its
relationship with the structural aspects of society. The above is divided into many
specialties that are responsible for analyzing and describing the specificity of the different
social processes as well as their impact on individuals.
Next, we explain what social sciences are and the characteristics of them.
branches.

What are the social sciences?

Social sciences are a set of academic disciplines that study aspects
of the human related to individual behavior and the functions and elements of
the social organization.
Unlike formal sciences, such as mathematics, logic, or physics; the
Social sciences study living systems. In turn, they are differentiated from the sciences.
natural sciences (which also study living systems), while social sciences
they study these systems based on the complexity of behavior and its effects on
social terms.
On the other hand, they are more related to the human sciences (the humanities), because
both that study a large part of subjectivity and collectivity, however, are
different in that social sciences emphasize the use of methods
scientists, while the humanities use more artistic and aesthetic methods.
In terms of science, 'the social' formally appeared only in the 19th century, when its
disciplines consolidated as fields of research with objects of study
own and differentiated. Initially, the term 'social science' was used to
group the studies on culture and society, with which theanthropologyy
thesociologythey were two of the pioneers.
Nevertheless, their background can be traced back even centuries, in the curiosity
what we have to understand what makes us human, the nature of our
behaviors, the relationship with the environment, how we do not organize socially, etc.

The 12 main branches of social sciences

Social sciences can be divided into different disciplines, which varies according to the
intention of those who define and use them. For example, according to tradition of
specific social science, one of these disciplines can be considered a science
social, or a human science, or even a natural science.
Likewise, and according to the needs of each context, there may be more or
fewer disciplines within the social sciences. This is the case, for example, of the limits
that exist among some subdisciplines within medicine (such as social medicine), the
sociobiology, neuropsychology or philosophy itself.
However, in very broad terms we can divide the social sciences into 10.
fundamental subjects: anthropology, sociology, geography, history, law, science
politics, economics, communication, pedagogy, and psychology.

Anthropology
Anthropology is the discipline that studies the social behavior of human beings in
relationship with its physical characteristics and with the cultural elements in which it is
They register. This implies the forms and norms that culture takes in different
societies both from the past and in the present.
It is a holistic discipline because it integrates different knowledge from various branches of the
social sciences and the natural sciences. It can be subdivided into different branches, such as the
physical anthropology, cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, or archaeology.

2. Sociology
Sociology is responsible for studying human social relationships and their institutions.
This implies that their objects of study are very diverse. They can range, for example, from
the religion to the family, passing through the social class divisions or the divisions
racial and the organization of the states, among many others. It seeks to understand both the
social stability as the processes of change and transformation.
At an individual level, sociology allows us to understand the consequences of
social phenomena in people (for example of gender identities, faith
religious, the institution of the family). And at a global level, sociology can help us
to understand phenomena such as migration, population growth, wars, the
economic development, among others.

Geography
Geography is the social science that is responsible for studying the different environments and
spaces that make up the Earth's surface, as well as the interactions that occur
between and within them. It is responsible for describing the main characteristics of the
places where our life takes place, especially paying attention to the
natural environments and how we relate to them.
As a result of this discipline, maps have emerged, which among other things
things allow us to understand where they are and what the places where we are like
we developed based on graphic descriptions of the land.

4. History
History is the discipline that is responsible for studying, describing, and representing the
events from the past, generally recorded in written documents, although
not necessarily. As 'the past' is a rather broad category, the
history can be divided in many ways.
This division begins by defining when one has transitioned from prehistory to
history. From this, the different periods that have characterized can be studied
different societies. There is, for example, medieval, modern, or contemporary history;
but also history of religion, history of art, world history, among many others
others

5. Legal sciences and law

Law as a specialty within the social sciences is responsible for studying the
set of institutions, their systems of rules and authority related to the
legality. On many occasions, law separates from social sciences and
understand as a school of its own, however, this area of study is founded
in the idea that laws and legality are themselves social institutions, and for
it is usually considered a branch of social science.
In this sense, law draws from human sciences such as philosophy, but also
of politics, economics, sociology, or history. The intention is to understand and
generate institutional normative orders that impact human behavior and in the
social relationships.

Political science
Political science is the discipline that studies, describes, and analyses theories and the
practices, systems, and political behaviors. Seeks to understand the
transfers of power in political decision-making processes and how these
Transfers are organized publicly and socially.
In addition to political theory, some subdisciplines that comprise this social science,
they are the theories of democracy and governance, the study of national systems, the
public and administrative policy, international law, among others.
At the methodological level, political science conducts, for example, analyses of sources.
primary sources such as written historical documents or interviews; and secondary sources
such as scientific articles, among other methods of empirical collection.

7. Economy
As much as social sciences tend to be associated with studies that disregard
the numbers, that is nothing but an illusion. A clear example of this is the existence of
economics as a scientific discipline.
Economics studies, analyzes, and describes the processes of production, distribution, and
consumption of goods and services. It seeks to understand what are the means we have
generated to meet our needs and how that impacts us both on a level
individual as social. Since economic activity is very diverse, the
Economics as a social science can be subdivided into different areas. For example, there are
studies in public economics, labor economics, international economics, economics of
development, among many others.
The economy has several levels of analysis, and if we pay attention to the scale of the processes
What it investigates, we can distinguish between macroeconomics and microeconomics. The first
focuses on global economic dynamics, while the second focuses on the
behavior and decision-making of individual entities, whether they are people or
organizations.
8. Communication
This discipline studies and describes the human processes related to creation.
and the exchange of symbols that serve us to communicate. Specifically
studies how the messages we create can be interpreted through different
political, cultural, or economic dimensions in each context.
Among other things, it analyzes how messages are crafted and transmitted through the media.
of mass communication, although it can also be through the arts, technology,
among other areas. Therefore, progress in communication studies has
implications in areas such as public health, the management of false rumors or of the
hate campaigns, the regulation of propaganda, etc.

9. Pedagogy
Pedagogy is a discipline that studies the teaching-learning processes.
they occur in different environments, especially within schools, as they are the
institutions where education develops and is transmitted. Education has
positioned as one of the fundamental aspects of culture because it allows the
socialization and the transmission of knowledge from one generation to another.
In this sense, pedagogy is the science that studies educational processes and
he also applies them through different tools that he shares, for example, with the
psychology, sociology, communication, among others.

10. Psychology
Psychology is the discipline that studies human or animal behavior and the
mental processes. It differs from other social sciences, such as anthropology, in
that seeks to develop generalized explanations about mental functions and the
individual or group behaviors, rather than on cultural processes or
historical.
Nevertheless, it is very much related to other human and social disciplines, since, for
Developing explanations about individual functioning has been necessary to take into account
It accounts for how we interact with others. Thus, different ones have emerged.
Subfields, some of the main ones are clinical psychology, social psychology,
educational psychology, organizational psychology, or neuropsychology.
On the other hand, psychology collaborates extensively with almost all other sciences.
social sciences, including those that study the social behavior of animals, such as
theethology.
Examples of psychologists who have been very relevant include Daniel Kahneman, Elizabeth
Loftus, Burrhus Frederic Skinner andAlbert Bandura.

11. Demography
Demography is the branch of Social Sciences responsible for studying the
characteristics and evolution of human populations starting from the tools of
statistics, through criteria such as population density, the dimensions of the
population groups, their basic structure, their development over time and the
implications regarding the possibilities of formation, conservation, or disappearance
of these sets.
Some of the most important aspects addressed by demography are the
birth rate, fertility, mortality, and migration processes, and they are taken into account
count variables such as the sex of the members of a population, the groups
blood types, ethnic groups, certain genetic markers, etc. Thus, although demography is
As part of the Social Sciences, there are aspects of its scope that are studied.
also from medicine or even biology, although they are relevant when it comes to
establish policies or predict the possible problems of a society.
Within this science, it is worth highlighting important demographers such as Thomas
Malthus, John Graunt, and Adolphe Quetelet, among others

12. Linguistics
As its name indicates, linguistics is the scientific study of the origin, the
development, the dispersion, and the structure of language in its different forms. Therefore,
this discipline is closely related to fields of study such as sociology and
anthropology (which studies the birth of dialects and languages, and their
interaction with other language variants and linguistic communities), and also to the
communication sciences (which focus more on the content of what is
. dice).
Linguistics researchers also observe and analyze the way in which
Grammar and the rules applied to the use of language arise, and many times they use
for this, elements provided by historians and archaeologists to understand their
evolution on a larger temporal scale. They are also interested in phonetics, linked to
spoken use of language, and by elements of the lexical level of language (that is, its
qualities linked to meaning), through sub-disciplines such as phraseology or the
lexicology.
Some of the main representatives of linguistics areNoam Chomsky, Franz
Bopp, Rodolfo Cerrón Palomino orFerdinand de Saussure.