ARCHITECTURAL SOCIOLOGY WHY DO WE STUDY ARCHITECTURAL SOCIOLOGY • Understand the relationship between sociology and architecture • Enable architects understand how they can use social knowledge to improve building designs. • Understand how architectural forms both influence and react to sociocultural phenomena. • Understand how society and social practices also influence architecture Goal of Sociology of Architecture • The main task of architectural sociology is to enable architects to present a sociological perspective on urban and building design. • Sociological perspective is the view that our social backgrounds influence our attitudes, behavior and life chances UNDERSTANDING SOCIOLOGY INTRODUCTION • Sociology is a social science that studies human societies, their interactions, and the processes(sociocultural, political,economic and infomedia) that preserve and change them. It does this by examining the dynamics of constituent parts of societies such as institutions, communities, populations, and gender, racial, or age groups. • Sociology also studies social status(ascribed or achieved), social movements(campaigns in support of a social goal), and social change (alteractions of mechanisms within the social structure), as well as societal disorder in the form of crime, deviance, and revolution. • Social life overwhelmingly regulates the behaviour of humans, largely because humans lack the instincts that guide most animal behaviour. Humans therefore depend on social institutions and organizations to inform their decisions and actions. Given the important role organizations play in influencing human action, it is sociology’s task to discover how organizations affect the behaviour of persons, how they are established, how organizations interact with one another, how they decay, and, ultimately, how they disappear. Among the most basic organizational structures are economic, religious, educational, and political institutions, as well as more specialized institutions such as the family, the community, the military, peer groups, clubs, and volunteer associations. Definitions • Sociology is a branch of social sciences that involves the systematic study of societies and social interactions to understand individuals , groups and institutions, through data collection and analysis. What is a society? • Society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. OR • A large group of interacting people in a defined territory, sharing a common culture Its subject matter ranges from micro scale all the way to macro scale. • Microsociology is small scale sociological analysis that studies the behavior of people in face-toface social interactions and small groups to understand what they do,say and think. • Macrosociology is the study of larger organizations, communities, and societies in which individuals live • Sociology is a broad discipline in terms of methodology and subject matter. Its traditional focusses have included; 1. Social relations 2. Social stratification 3. Social interaction 4. Culture and deviance Its approaches have included qualitative and quantitative research techniques. DISCUSSION QUESTION Society is constantly changing over time. Some argue it is growing and other say it is shrinking. What is your opinion? Give reasons for your answer.
