Federico V. Magdalena, Ph.D. Faculty Specialist University of Hawai'i at Manoa

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Mabuhay! Aloha! Join me in this voyage into the "social jungle" of society to explore the unknown, following the well beaten path that you and I are thoroughly familiar with. As we move along, you will find confusing crossroads, each one suggesting a way among the many possibilities of explaining reality. Which road do you take? Trust your instinct - the one which shows sign of repeated use is more likely the right path. It is what most trekkers before you have considered right by "agreement" or experience. Realize that society operates like this obvious example. What constitutes reality or fact is a matter of what most people have agreed to be "correct." Sociology is also built from about the same principle. It is a study of what seems to be the obvious, knowing what many people already think exists rather than what should be or ought to be. But this is just one rule about sociological thinking. The second rule, I believe, is the questioning attitude. That is, to debunk the widely held notion that people do certain things because it is familiar. They don't want to take risk by entering a less known crossroad. We ask: Why is it that they behave the way they do? This question begs a lot of analyzing and imagining. Sociology HomePage is about this stuff.

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Date last updated: March 1, 2010 Web design by F. Magdalena
Times visited since 9-1-05