Sociology is the study of society and human behavior. The sociological perspective is understanding human behavior by placing it within its broader social context. At its center is the question of how groups influence people, especially how people are influenced by their society – a group of people who share a culture and a territory. At the center of what you do and how you think is the society in which you grow up and your particular location in that society.
Verstehen is a concept perhaps best understood as “to have insight into someone’s situation”. The best interpreter of human behavior is someone who “has been there”. We must pay attention to subjective meanings – the meanings that people give their own behavior. Social facts is a term for a group’s patterns of behavior.
—October 2020
Lance Jones 