Understanding the Social World: Role of Research, Alienation, Social Movements, and Sustainability

This report discusses the concept of understanding the social world in terms of different perceptions and the diminishing rate of community and social cohesion in the contemporary society. It covers the role of qualitative and quantitative research, alienation, social movements, and sustainability in understanding the social world.

MAKING SENSE OF
SOCIETY;
UNDERSTDING THE
SOCIAL WORLD

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY......................................................................................................................3
Section- A............................................................................................................................3
The role of qualitative and quantitative research in understanding the social world......3
Alienation helps in understanding the social world........................................................4
The importance of social movement in understanding the social world.........................4
How sustainability helping in understanding the social world.......................................5
Section- B............................................................................................................................6
How Community and social cohesion are declining in a contemporary society............6
CONCLUSION....................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES....................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Social world is the analysation of social surroundings which helps in emerging the
activities of society. The social world mainly focuses on the human behaviour, values and
morals. It helps in the stimulation of the mentality in people by understanding their
behaviour in different situations. (Moore and Prabhu, 2018). This report will illustrate the
concept of understanding the social world in terms of different perception. Apart from
this, it illustrates the diminishing rate of community and social cohesion in the
contemporary society.
MAIN BODY
Section- A
The role of qualitative and quantitative research in understanding the social world
Qualitative methods refers to having direct or straight communication with the
members of the society. It has been done in order to know the behaviour of the people in
different situations. It helps in understanding the social world by observing, how a person
feel, think and behave in different situations or with other people. On the other hand
Quantitative research refers to understanding the different phenomena which affected
individuals. This is done in order to know the experience of an individual from a difficult
situation and creates an understanding in the mind of the people. Both the research shows
different aspects of the people in terms of their behaviour and experience.
Qualitative research takes place with the help of personal discussions or personal
interviews. Under this, the discussion is done with the individual and their reactions is
observed personally and the data has been gathered while on the other hand quantitative
research uses statistical method for gathering the data, the data has been collected with
the help of surveys or polls. (Egal, 2018). The results have been showed in mathematical
terms.
Both the researches helps differently in understanding the social world.
Qualitative research helps by observing the thinking level of an individual, the way of
responding and behaving of people. On the other hand qualitative research helps in

understanding the social world by influencing the people, so they can overcome from the
situations which has a drastic effect on them and can stimulate their mental health.
Alienation helps in understanding the social world
Alienation refers to that situation where a person gets separated or separates their
affections from any materialistic thing or from individual. This leads to developing a
phase in the mind for living alone and gets separated from the society. With the help of
this concept socialists are able to know the feeling and reason of disconnection in the
people. (Jensen, 2020). From various theories it has been found that in context of
understanding the social world, socialists used the concept of alienation by studying its
four features which are known as powerlessness, meaninglessness, social isolation and
self estrangement.
Powerlessness refers to that situation when an individual feels that they do not
have any control over their life. They feel powerless and think that they cannot manage
anything in their life. Under meaninglessness, the person did not feel any connection with
the work other people do as they found it meaningless and think that there is no sense of
doing. On the other hand, social isolation is a situation where a person feels that they do
not have any connection with the social community and cannot find any common values
between them and the community. (Moises, 2020). The last one is self estrangement, this
phase occurs when an individual denies his\her personal interest in order to satisfy others.
These four features of alienation helps in understanding the different ways of feeling
disconnection towards the society.
The importance of social movement in understanding the social world
Social movement are organized in order to achieve the social goal, certain groups
has been made under this by those people who have a common interest of being socially
active and believes in making other members socially organized. Under this, large
number of discussion takes place regarding the social values. (Bernet and et.al., 2018).
The organizations who carry forward these movements works are the influencers for the
society. The ultimate goal of this movement is to bring the social change along with
changing the outlook of the people in terms of social behaviour.

This movement plays an important role in understanding the social world as it
plays a major role in re-shaping the thinking of people. These movements lead to large
number of discussions which shows the different perceptions of the human nature along
with this it also shows the development ratio of the people. This simply focuses on giving
an opportunity to the people of coming together and speaking about those issues which
have a drastic effect on their behaviour.
Social movements helps in understanding the social world by making people
more aware about the social environment and by forming large number of groups that
focuses on the specific political and social issues. (Ahmad, Chaudhary and Murtaza,
2020). These groups work with the aim of bringing social change in the society, it helps
in boosting the people to come forward and share their good and experience so the other
members can learn something from that.
How sustainability helping in understanding the social world
Sustainability in social world refers to managing and identifying the positive and
negative impacts of the different communities in the society. It focuses on creating a
structure which influence the public for creating a healthy community. The main goal of
this is to understand the need of people from the areas they live or from their workplace.
Apart from this it highly focuses on the well-being of the people living in society.
Sustainability in social world is just not limited to the current generation along with the
current generation it also focus on the coming generation by promoting a good and
healthy environment.
In context of social world, sustainability playing a major role by ensuring that the
people have full access to the required resources such as, food, shelter, water, healthcare
and human rights. (Mathieu, 2021). Along with this it has a keen focus on the business
environment and ensuring that the employees are enjoying their rights without any
discrimination and the business is full-filing its responsibilities towards the society and
healthy environment.
It helps in understanding the labours right, social responsibilities, community
development importance and justice. (Omvedt, 2019). Socialists used sustainability as a

weapon to know the current status of the society and along with this it also helps in
knowing that, how this current scenario will affect the future scenario.
Section- B
How Community and social cohesion are declining in a contemporary society
Community refers to the group of the individuals living at the same area and
having common features. It provides feeling of togetherness and belongingness to the
people. On the other hand social cohesion involves the building of common values and
interest between the people at the workplace or in the community and reducing the
differences which occur through the factors like gender, religion, income and wealth.
(Wolff, 2020). This concept focuses on treating equal everyone in the society. It enables
people to have a thinking that they are from same field with the same values. While
contemporary society refers to well advanced society in terms of literacy, gender, living
standard, economic growth, technology, life expectancy and globalization. Community
and social cohesion stimulates the mentality of people by providing them a sense of
equality, when the people treated equally at the workplace then they experience a good
social connection with their colleagues.
Community and Social cohesion has been considered as very significant in the
contemporary society as this concept helps people to have faith of equality which
stimulates them to be productive at the workplace and focuses on their economic growth
and helps in the business development. This process takes time as it is linked with the
faith and beliefs of the human. It helps in making competition sustainable and allows
everyone to share the experience of comfort.
The subjective component of social cohesion are general trust in each other,
desire to cooperate, feeling of belonging in the community, accepting the diversity,
putting trust in the leaders and experiencing fairness. But, it has been found from various
studies that all of these or some of these components are on a declining rate in the
contemporary society and this is occurring due to losing trust of people in each other as
they are no longer having a sense of treating equal at the workplace or in the community.
(Vismara, 2019). Differences like income, wealth, gender, racism, lack of safety,

language barriers, making people insecure, and they are losing their confidence to trust
and coordinate each other at the workplace.
These differences are working as a barrier in the process of social cohesion ,
income and wealth of a person is typically different somehow this makes insecure to the
person with less income in front of the person with high income. Gender inequality and
racism makes people insecure at the workplace and reduce their willing to work on the
other hand lack of safety can make everyone uncomfortable and language barriers is
reducing the efficiency of communication. These barriers are reducing the productivity of
the people, some major steps are needed to be taken, so the people can have faith in this
advanced society.
Social cohesion of a society depends upon the economic growth of the society.
The rate of economic growth enables people to have a higher level of trust in each other.
The government of a country is responsible for the rate of growth in economic. If the
people have high rate of trust in their government then they experience the sense of
security. Therefore, the democracy criteria of a country should be in such a way, so that
the people can have high rate of trust in their democracy and towards their community.
Government should put more focus on this by making more policies regarding this.
The society has transferred from old to new pattern and it is very hard for the
people to believe anyone in this globalized world. The democracy of a country plays a
major role in convincing the people and in winning their trust in regard of safe and secure
society. (Langer and et.al., 2017). Social cohesion is key element in the social world
therefore it is need to be sustained anyhow otherwise people will completely lose their
faith and believe in this contemporary society and this will lead to the diminishing of
social world. It can be increase by promoting social activities at the workplaces and in all
over the community. Social activities such as campaigns, gatherings provides people a
platform to the people to discuss their thinkings and sharing of their experiences. These
increases the faith and belief of the people towards the society, and they experience a
sense of belongingness.
From the above information it has been found that the in our modern society the
rate of social cohesion is on a declining rate and if this will continue like this, then soon
this rate will go to the finishing point. Maintaining a good social world is the primary

field to look upon as this social world makes people sure that they are living in a safe and
secure society but this fast growing globalized community is failing in making a good
social network. The society has made earning its topmost priority. The major reason
behind the declining rate of social cohesion is the society full of judgements and
competition.
People believe in judging more than understanding the values, they believe in
competition rather than learning. Due to this many people loss their confidence and
values of understanding they feel that they are apart from this society, and they cannot be
like everyone. That is leading our society towards the disbeliefs in people for each other
even for self too. Our modern business ethics are looking forward it and trying their best
to full-fill the social values towards society, so they can have the trust of people with
them. Government has set up some social groups who are influencing the people and
e4ncouraging them to be more socially active, so they can enjoy their social rights.
(Martins and et.al., 2017). This is an ongoing process, still society have not achieved its
target in terms of a good social world even many steps has been taken but, this is a long
process as it is connected to human values. Our globalized society is developing so
highly that it forget to put human values at first. The society with the good rate of social
cohesion proves to be highly developed in terms of economic and social growth. Along
with this it proves to be had a good understanding of social world.
CONCLUSION
From the above report, it has been concluded that the understanding of the social
world plays an important role in creating and maintaining the social values of the people.
The social world provides a good sense of faith and belongingness to the people towards
each other and towards community. Along with this it has also been found that in our
contemporary society the rate of social cohesion is declining and the government is
playing an important role in promoting the social cohesion.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Ahmad, S., Chaudhary, F. and Murtaza, G., 2020. Parental Hunger and Alienation in
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Bernet, W., and et.al., 2018. An objective measure of splitting in parental alienation: The
Parental Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire. Journal of forensic
sciences. 63(3). pp.776-783.
Jensen, K.B. ed., 2020. A handbook of media and communication research: Qualitative
and quantitative methodologies. Routledge.
Langer, A., and et.al., 2017. Conceptualising and measuring social cohesion in Africa:
Towards a perceptions-based index. Social Indicators Research. 131(1). pp.321-
343.
Martins, J.G., and et.al., 2017. New evidence about the “dark side” of social cohesion in
promoting binge drinking among adolescents. PloS one. 12(6). p.e0178652.
Mathieu, L., 2021. The space of social movements. Social movement studies. 20(2).
pp.193-207.
Moises Jr, C., 2020. Online data collection as adaptation in conducting quantitative and
qualitative research during the COVID-19 pandemic. European Journal of
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Moore, A.J. and Prabhu, V.P., 2018. Towards an Understanding of Social
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Omvedt, G., 2019. Reinventing revolution: New social movements and the socialist
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Segal, E.A., 2018. Social empathy: The art of understanding others. Columbia University
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Vismara, S., 2019. Sustainability in equity crowdfunding. Technological Forecasting and
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Wolff, L.A., 2020. Sustainability education in risks and crises: Lessons from Covid-19.