formerly SPS/07 General Sociology

Includes scholarly and teaching activity that builds the epistemological, theoretical, methodological and historical foundations of sociology. It includes the development of quantitative and qualitative methodologies for surveying, information processing, and data construction; the design and implementation of longitudinal surveys, surveys and panels, network analysis, ethnographic, biographical, and case studies, and experiments in the co-production of observations in study contexts; the development of models and techniques for the simulation, explanation, prediction, and monitoring of social phenomena; and the construction of scenarios and strategies for evaluating interventions. The field develops the categorical and theoretical-methodological apparatuses aimed at:

• understanding and explaining the structuring processes of social practices, networks and groups; the processes of institutionalization and de-institutionalization of social action; and the forms of order, differentiation and inequality in access to various capacitation resources;
• understanding of the forms of subjectification and the cultural, structural and regulatory configurations of social action at the individual and collective levels, and its affective, unintentional and emergent outcomes;
• cultural-historical understanding of social transformations and the various forms, actors, devices and techno-scientific apparatuses that support them.

The field provides tools of reflexivity to individual and collective subjects and social systems, also contributing to the elaboration of future social scenarios and their value systems. These tools are relevant in the various areas of decision-making, critical examination of specific social problems, design and evaluation of public and organizational interventions, with particular reference to social policy, welfare, and theoretical, procedural and deontological aspects of social service. Teaching and training are aimed at the acquisition of professional skills with a broad social characterization necessary for reflexivity of action. In research and teaching, the field is specified according to the following articulations: theories and history of sociology; comparative social systems; methodology and techniques of social research; epistemology and survey models of the social sciences; strategies for analysis and presentation of sociological data; social studies of science and technology; political-social ecology; sociology of innovation; sociology of health, medicine and sport; evaluation of social policies and interventions; social innovation and sustainability; social policies, models, systems and regimes of welfare; principles, fundamentals, methods and ethics of social service; planning, organization and management of social policies and services.