The statistics indicate that the number of people who commit suicide every year is approximately 3 thousand in Turkey.
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(...) suicide rates are higher in times of peace than times of war; and higher in times of economic crisis than times of economic welfare.
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C.W.Mills used the "sociological imagination" phrase to explain the need to move away from viewing problems as personal and to recognize them as social issues. The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within the society.
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Sociology as a social science has its origins in the effort to understand the transformation from the traditional society to the modern society.
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At the meso level sociologists study the experiences of groups and the interactions between groups.
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Although the concept of society is often used to refer to a nation, they are different concepts. The concept of nation is a political category, and refers to a pretended unity which involves official recognition. As a political category, a nation cannot subsist on its own; nations generally subsist through the agency of their states. Society, on the other hand, is a praxis, which is established by mutually bounded social relations. Societies are not political units; they are not administered by the politicians. Societies administer themselves, they can subsist on their own, they do not need any agency. (...) Every nation is a society, but not every society is a nation. Society is not the totality of people; it is the totality of the mutual relationships among a community of people who share a specific territory, a specific culture and common social institutions.
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Types of society
In the most general level, societies before the 18th century are called “traditional societies”. In the Western world, the majority of the traditional societies transformed through Enlightenment, Scientific and Political Revolutions and the Industrial Revolution, and a new society emerged. This new type of society is called
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Social action is an action which is oriented towards the past, present or future actions of the other people. (...) if an action is made towards other people’s actions, it is a meaningful social action.
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Social structure is the perpetual, continuous and organized relations among the groups and social institutions that consist the society.
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(...) social institutions are a totality of perpetual rules which are important for the maintenance of the structure and main values of the society. Social institutions include thoughts on how to reach the aims that are considered significant. The process of a social practice to become regular and perpetual enough for being a social institution is called institutionalization (Johnson, 2000:157). The main social institutions, family, religion, economy, education, health and politics exist in every society, although sometimes they appear in different forms.
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Sociologists are divided as to whether social action or the social structure better explains the social reality. The approach in which social action is more important is the Interpretive approach, and the approach in which the structure is more important is the Positivist-Structuralist approach.
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Social facts are created collectively by society. They are exterior, inevitable and limiting for the individuals. In other words, the social facts are the acting, thinking and feeling patterns which are out and above of the individuals and have the power to force themselves to the individuals. (...) Because the social facts impose themselves upon individuals, deviation from social facts can result in various types of sanctions. (...) They are the creation of human activities or actions, however, they are not the product of conscious intentions, and they are the unanticipated consequence of human agency. Examples of the social facts are the social institutions, statuses, roles, laws, beliefs, population distribution, urbanization, language, religion etc. For example, violence against women is a social fact. Poverty, marriage, urbanization, class structure, subcultures are also examples of social facts.
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(A) social group is a set of people who share common goals and interests, who are interrelated and who have a continuous interaction for a while. (...) The groups may be permanent or temporary. (...) Social groups have control over their members. This control is often exercised by group norms.
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Self: When they are born, individuals do not have any idea about who they are. In time, they learn what other people think about them and they learn to think in the same way. (...) According to sociologist George Herbert Mead, the theorist of The Theory of the Social Self, the self is developed by three phases. These phases are the language, the play, and the game. The language phase allows individuals to respond to each other’s opinions or emotions. Emotions like anger or happiness, and opinions about a person or a subject are conveyed through the language. The play phase develops self by developing self-consciousness through role playing. During the role-playing, individuals learn to internalize other people’s perspectives. The game phase develops self by allowing individuals to learn and follow the rules of the activity (the game). Thus, individuals learn that there are rules and regulations to follow in order to be considered successful in an activity.
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A status is the rank, the position that one holds in the society. (...) Statuses are divided into two basic types. These are ascribed and achieved status. The statuses that the individual has in birth, are ascribed statuses. Sex, age, race, ethnic group are examples of ascribed status. The statuses that individuals gain during their life, are achieved statuses. The achieved statuses are gained by individuals’ knowledge, abilities, skills, or sometimes luck.
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