Challenges in your discipline

Hello! Today I’m going to tell you about the different challenges that Sociology has today. This is a Social Science’s discipline that studies, with different techniques, human behavior. It has an empirical investigation level and a critical analysis one; both define the way in which the human social structure knowledge is developed. In Latin America, the creation of knowledge has always been related to the specific characteristics that this region has, in terms of dependence (with Falleto and Cardoso) in a theorycal branch, or in terms of solving different social issues such as poverty, in a more pragmatic area. Nowadays, there are a lot of different theorical development in topics such as globalization, modernization and mass media, complemented with the always in vogue topics named before such as poverty, indigenous matters, children and women. Sociologists always have an opinion on what’s going on in the world, and of course, what should be the best way to solve problems. There are a lot of social scientists that make critics towards social and human behavior, perspectives that are, most of the time, very pessimistic in relation to the way that social relations are going on. Anyway, the challenges in Latin-American sociology are, in a general perspective, to produce more investigations in order to improve knowledge, so that we make a good use of it. To accomplish this, sociology as a discipline must make progress in the use of technology, that is, improve social programs and research, study social statistics and quantitative methods, as well as qualitative ones, and improve theorical development in order to enrich these social investigations. Universities have a very important role in this case, even more important than the independent social studies centers. Universities have the monopoly of knowledge in some people’s perspective, but they are the organisms that, I my opinion, can benefit in a better way society. In this line, social sciences faculties must make an advance in educating the new social scientists, because the students now are the professionals of the future.