of learning apart from sociology seems to have
its own distinctive subject matter. Political science,
for example, deals with the ways in which society
allocates the right to use legitimate power. Sociology,
however, has not yet had a special or distinctive
subject matter clearly associated with it. The subject
matter should be something concrete, specific, and
easily identified, something that is not claimed as the
central object of study of some other established
discipline.
The most cursory glance at the easily identified
major institutions, social products, and social
processes reveals that there are indeed such
unassigned or unclaimed subjects. Politics and
economics are spoken for, and so in large measure
are literature, language, education, and business.
But there remain the family, crime, social classes,
ethnic and racial groups, the urban and the rural
community. No one of these major components of
society has become the distinctive object of study
for a specialized branch of learning, which has the
status of an independent discipline, such as politics
or economics. Instead, each of these subjects has
become a focus for research and theory-building
within sociology. In this way sociology has, to a
degree, become the great residual category of the
social sciences. It has not one subject, but many.
Indeed, some might argue that in this sense sociology
has no distinctive subject matter. It is merely a
collection of disciplines united mainly by the fact
that they deal with institutions and social processes that have historically failed to become sufficiently
specialized and important to win independent
standing as intellectual disciplines.
If the long, continuing process of differentiation
and specialization in scholarship were to go so
far that all the subfields of sociology came to be
established as separate disciplines, would sociology
then cease to exist as a discipline in its own right?
We can properly say “no” only if we can point
to a distinctive subject matter that would remain
for sociology. Happily we can. We may propose
several distinctive subject matters to which sociology
could still lay claim. They are, in decreasing order
of size and complexity: societies, institutions, social
relationships, and families.
53. It can be inferred from the passage
that which of the following is true
about the institutions and social
processes mentioned in the
passage?
A.They have not been considered
to be as important as business
and economics.
B.They were a late addition to the
field of sociology.
C.They are not functioning as well
as they did in the past.
D.They are clearly distinct from the
study of sociology.
答案是A，為什麼要選A？這題完全沒頭緒..
