UCSP REVIEWER 1ST QUARTER
research should not criticize existing
DOING SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH
 Science and Common Sense
o People often do inquiries to answer
specific questions; often experience
predicting the future. To answer
questions, many people turn to common
sense or the prevailing opinion among
people.
o Common Sense is prone to:
 Overgeneralization
 Inaccurate Observation
 Illogical Reasoning
 The Emancipatory Potential of the Social
Sciences
o Social Sciences – contribute greatly to
the elimination of the prejudices against
certain groups of people.
 It helps people to better understand
other people's way of life.
 They challenge the common sense
beliefs and refuse to follow
unexamined traditions.
 Open System of the Social Sciences -
open systems applies to society, politics,
culture, and the world.
o Two Basic Methods in the Social
Sciences
 Quantitative – research involving the
collection of data in numerical form
for quantitative analysis.
 Qualitative – research that
investigates aspect of social life.
- Case Study – attempts to shed
light on a phenomenon by
studying in depth a single case
example of the phenomena. The
case can be an individual person,
an event, a group, or an
institution.
- Ground Theory – theory
developed inductively from a
corpus of data acquired by a
participant-observer.
- Phenomenology – describes the
structures of experience as they
present themselves to
consciousness, without recourse
to theory, deduction, or
assumptions from other
disciplines.
- Ethnography – focuses on the
sociology of meaning though
close field observation of
sociocultural phenomena.
Typically, the ethnographer
focuses on a community.
- Historical – systematic collection
and objective evaluation of data
related to past occurrences in
order to test hypothesis
concerning cause, effects, or
trends of these events that may
help to explain present events
and anticipate future events.
o Positivist Tradition - believed that social
beliefs and practices.
DEFINING CULTURE, SOCIETY, AND
POLITICS
 Culture – way of life/living; all the
shared products of human groups.
o Material – physical objects that
people create and use.
o Non-material – abstract human
creations such as traditions, beliefs,
language, etc.
 Politics
o Branches of Government
 Executive – responsible for
carrying out or administering laws
enacted by legislature.
- President, Vice President,
Cabinet Members
 Legislative – responsible for the
creation of laws administered by
executive branch of government.
If the bill is not signed by the
Pres. in 30 days, the legislature
will have to vote for the bill.
- Senate, House of
Representative
 Judiciary – responsible for
evaluating laws; determines
whether or not there has been a
grave abuse of discretion
amounting to lack or excess of
jurisdiction on the part and
instrumentality of the government
- Supreme Court, lower courts
 Gender
o Sex – chiefly centers on the
biological differences: male and
female.
o Gender - culturally learned difference
between men and women.
 Socio-economic Status
o Upper Class
 New Rich – people who first
experienced hardships before
they became rich.
 Traditional Rich – people whose
wealth were passed down on to
them.
o Middle Class - composed of small
business and industry operators.
o Lower Class - Farm employees,
skilled and unskilled, artisans,
service workers, and people who
may be unemployed or
underemployed or those who belong
to indigent families or informal
sectors fall to lower class.
 A family could hardly eat three
decent meals a day.
  The daily income could hardly
feed the entire family.
 Does not have a permanent job.
 Ethnicity - The expression of set of
cultural ideas held by a distinct ethnic of
indigenous group.
o Language
 Based of 2000 census of
NSO, the 8 major ethno
linguistic groups
(Tagalog 28.1%, Cebuano
13.1%, Ilocano 9%,
Bisaya/Binasaya 7.6%,
Ilonggo/ Hiligaynon 7.5%,
Bikol 6%, Waray 3.4%,
Others 2.3%)
o Ancestry
o Origin
o Customs
o Traditions
 Religion - Spiritual sphere or the
supernatural, along with associated
ceremonial or ritualistic practices.
o Based of 2000 census
(Roman Catholic 82.9%, Islam
5%, Evangelical 2.8%, Iglesia Ni
Cristo 2.3%, Protestant groups
4.5%, Others 1.8%, Unspecified
0.6%, No religion 0.1%)
 Exceptionality - Refers to the state of
being intellectually gifted and/or having
physically or mentally challenged.
 Nationality - Legal relationship that
binds a person and a country.
o Natural – people who are born
Filipino, parents were both
Filipinos.
o Naturalized - is a person who
was born an alien, but has
lawfully become a citizen of the
Philippines under PH Constitution
and laws.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF THE
GROWTH OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
 Social Science – last to develop after the
natural sciences.
o Originated from three Greek
philosophers:
 Socrates – teacher of Plato; he has
no writings on his own, instead his
students would write his words for
future generations.
 Plato – teacher of Aristotle; helped to
lay the foundations for philosophy,
rhetoric and logic through his
Socratic Dialogues.
 Aristotle – passed on what he
learned from Plato to his own
students including Alexander the
Great. Alexander spread this
knowledge to his conquest.
o Before the birth of modern social
sciences in the West, the study of
society, culture and politics were based
on social and political philosophy.
 Natural and Social
o Natural Science - The study of physical
and natural world which also pertain to
the natural events that occur in nature.
o Social Science - the study of human
society and the relationship of human
behavior to his society.
 Political Philosophy and Social
Philosophy
o Political Philosophy – begins with the
assumptions that such public questions
as obedience to the law, the best
government possible, or the justice of
public policies are in need of
justification.
o Social Philosophy – evaluates
institutional power in terms of moral
principles.
 Philosophy and Religion
o Philosophy – concerned with question
o Religion – provide all-encompassing
answers to life’s questions.
 Philosophy and Science – would have not
developed if it remained under the wings of
philosophy and theology.
o Science – seeks to discover the truth
about specific causes of events and
happenings in the natural world based
on empirical data, tested theories, and
carefully contrived observations.
o Philosophy - based on analytic
understanding of the nature of truth
asserted about specific topics of issues.
 The Development of the Social Sciences
during the Modern Period
o Pure Science – the exact science of the
development of scientific theories.
o Applied Science – the exact science of
applying knowledge.
 The Unprecedented Growth of Social
Science
o Nicolaus Copernicus – scientific
revolution begun on him. Suggests that
the Sun is the center of the solar
system. Refers to historical changes in
thought and belief, to changes in social
& institutional organization that unfolded
in Europe roughly between 1550 and
1700.
o Isaac Newton – proposed universal laws
of motion and a mechanical model of
the universe. He has a book entitled
“Philosophia Naturalis Principia
Mathematica” – Mathematical Principles
of Natural Philosophy.
 o Sir Francis Bacon - Established the
supremacy of reason over imagination.
o Rene Descartes and Isaac Newton –
laid foundations of science and
technology to change the world.
o Dominance of Science – discovery of
gravity, mathematization of physics,
medicine
 Secularization of Learning and
Education
o Modern Period – Scientific method over
theological thinking
o Reformation – Reasons & science over
religious authority.
- Martin Luther - German monk who
questioned the leadership and
theology of the Catholic Church in
1517. The Catholic Church
sold indulgences in the late
medieval period, and their sale
motivated Martin Luther to present
his "95 Theses. He came to reject
several teachings & practices of the
Roman Catholic Church.
 Indulgence – remission of
punishment caused by sin.
o Enlightenment – courage to know
- Cultural Movement
 Rationalism  Scientific
 Theories  Method
- Emmanuel Kant – challenged
metaphysics
 Tradition
 God’s Existence
- Advocate the use of the
reason in order to know
the nature of the world and
human being.
o Medieval – universities relies on
religious tradition and Bible
o Rationalization - Social life is more &
more subjected to calculation &
prediction due to the regularities done
by science.
- Max Weber – figures modern
sociology; described as
rationalization
- Louis Pasteur – germ theory and
vaccination
- Francois Lyotard - Science
triumphed because it provided
reliable results.
o Advance Human Knowledge – collapse
of religious authority over social life of
people.
o The Rise of Universities
- Merchants and capitalists
supported universities and
institutions of secular learning.
- Hub of training of future scientist,
and technological innovators.
- Durkheim, one of the founding
fathers of sociology.
- Durkheim, lectured on the need
to secularize education and base
the curriculum on the need of
nation-state.
- Durkheim, lectured on the need
to secularize education and base
the curriculum on the need of
nation-state.
 Dissolution of Feudal Social Relation
o Gemeinschaft - Ferdinand Tonnies,
lamented the passing away of
gemeinschaft or community because of
urbanization. Community and society,
showed how the modern way of life had
drastically changed.
o Gesellschaft - people had warm
relationships with the community.
o Idividualism - cold and calculated social
relationship.
o Capitalism - replaced agricultural
economy. People began to see others
as economic transaction than personal
relationship.
 Trade and Commerce
o Livres des merveilles du monde
(Discovery of the World) recorded the
travel of Marco Polo, an Italian merchant
from Venice.
o Columbus’ five journeys to America
(1942-1506)
o Polo’s travels (1276-1291) to Magellan
circumnavigation of the World (1519-
1522).
o The travels fed the imaginations of the
Europeans with vivid descriptions of
places whose very existence they had
so far been unaware of.
o Anthropologist began to compare the
differences between rural life and city
life.
 The Rise of Individualism
o The intensification of commerce and
trade gradually replaced barter with the
introduction of money and banking
system.
o Banking system extend to credit and
transaction.
 o Money Economy - Transformed
individuals to autonomous consumers
who were released from attachment to
local contexts and traditions.
o From feudal system to capitalism
SOCIAL SCIENCES AS A RESPONSE TO
THE SOCIAL TURMOIL
 Sociology - branch of science that deals
with the scientific study of human
interactions, social groups and institutions,
whole societies, and the human world.
o Auguste Comte – Father of Sociology.
He originally used “Social Physics” as a
term for sociology. Aim: to discover
social laws that govern the development
of societies.
 Anthropology
- Positivism – science and its
method is the only valid way of
knowing things.
o Harriet Martineau – The “founding
mother” of sociology. With physical
disabilities (deaf), she travelled a lot,
especially in the United States. How to
Observe Morals and Manners (1838),
deep sociological insights that we now
call as sociological insights.
o Karl Marx - The father of scientific
socialism. He introduced the materialist
analysis of history which discounts
religious and metaphysical explanation
for historical development. From
agricultural to modern industrial
capitalist societies. He stands out as the
sociologist who combined revolutionary
activity with scholarly passion.
o Emile Durkhiem - Pioneer of
functionalism in sociology. Responsible
from defending sociology as an
independent discipline from psychology.
A society possesses a reality sui generis
(unique) independent of individual and
institutions. Society pre-existed the
individual and will continue to exist long
after the individual is dead. Contributed
in field of sociology of religion,
education, and deviance.
o Max Weber - Pioneer of interpretive
sociology. He stressed the role of
rationalization in the development of
sociology. As science began to replace
religion, people also adopted a scientific
or rational attitude to the world.
People refused to believe in
myths and superstitious beliefs and
began to be dependent to science to
order their lives. Greatest application of
scientific way of life is in bureaucracy.
o Franz Boas - Father of modern
American Anthropology. Rejected the
biological basis of racism or racial
discrimination. Favor of HISTORICAL
PARTICULARISM. Each society is
considered as having a unique form of
culture that cannot subsumed under an
overall definition of general culture.
Advocated cultural relativism or the
complexity of all culture.
o Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski -
Contributed to the development of
modern anthropology. He developed
PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION.
- Participant Observation - Method
of Social Science research that
requires the anthropologists to
have the ability to participate and
blend with the way of life of a
given group of people. One of
the most influential
ethnographers in the 21st
 century. Ethnography is literally
the practice of writing about
people.
o Alfred Reginald-Radcliffe-Brown - He
advocated the study of abstract
principles that govern social change.
Established STRUCTURAL-
FUNCTIONAL PARADIGM.
- Structural-Functional Paradigm -
The basic unit of analysis for
anthropology and social Sciences
are the social structures and the
functions they perform to
maintain the equilibrium.
 Political Science

 Social Sciences In The Era Of

Globalization
o Science as universalizing form of
knowing but sensitive to the local
cultures of the people.

o POLITICS refers to the process of

making collective decisions in
community, society or group through the
application of influence and power.
o POLITICAL SCIENCE studies how even
the private and personal decisions of
individuals are influenced by collective
decisions of a community.
o Philosopher’s works, highlighting the
social contract theory, became the
o REFLEXIVITY or the awareness of the
foundation of modern democratic theory.
social scientists of the ideological,
 State-centered to Pluralism
political, and social biases of their
o Pluralism led to the emphasis on
standpoints.
analyzing group interests rather than the
state.
o Political Science will be dominated by
behavioral orientation defined as
EMPIRICAL SCIENCE.
 The Colonial Origin Of The Social
Sciences
o The clamor for decolonization of social
science
o Indigenization of social scieces in the
philippines
- Zeus Salazar, an anthropologist
advocated for the indigenization of
social sciences.