Understanding Society: Qualitative and Quantitative Research, Alienation, Social Movements, Sustainability, and Decline of Social Cohesion in Contemporary Society

This assignment covers topics like qualitative and quantitative research, alienation, social movements, sustainability, and decline of social cohesion in contemporary society. It also discusses the concept of social cohesion and community cohesion in sociology.

Making sense of
Society

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
SECTION 1......................................................................................................................................1
Qualitative and Quantitative Research...................................................................................1
Alienation...............................................................................................................................2
Social Movements..................................................................................................................2
Sustainability..........................................................................................................................3
SECTION 2......................................................................................................................................4
“Community and social cohesion are in decline in the contemporary society.” Discuss.......4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Sociology refers to the study of social cause and social life which is linked with the human
behaviour and change (Leddy-Owen, 2020). It is helpful to analyse the overall structure of
society and group to analyse how people tends to interact with each other in several situations.
The assignment leads to cover discussion about the general topics like qualitative and
quantitative research, alienation, social movements and sustainability in research context. Apart
from that, the concept of social cohesion and community cohesion is an important area of
sociology when dealing with the behaviours of people within a group and analysing the general
formation of a strong community that determines an individual's social behaviours throughout
life (Volpato and King, 2019). The theory of social cohesiveness is carried out here along with
the reasons why social cohesiveness declines in today's world. It also contains the dimension of
social cohesion used to represent the current level.
SECTION 1
Qualitative and Quantitative Research
 Qualitative research also helps to adopt these research factors, including qualitative
factors, and analyse the results in the right words. Separately, quantitative research is
used to analyse good results in graphs, numbers and statistics.
 Here, the social world can be understood through both concepts and facts. For example,
when researchers are analysing the overall behaviour of a group, they need to react to
each other, respond and observe them properly while talking.
 Observing the overall behaviour and attitude in terms of preparing the report is based on
effective observations in the essay and the concerning paragraphs will be determined that
the research is done on qualitative basis. Therefore, it is important for the researcher to
organise qualitative research to identify the behaviour of their targeted group.
 Qualitative research provides supplementary information to effectively explain statistical
information. For instance, online stores go through numerical data and determines the
majority of their customers which are female.
 Despite from this, quantitative research is defined as the systematic phenomena by
collecting the quantifiable data, computational or mathematical techniques.
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 This research collects information from the potential or existing customers with the help
of sampling methods and also sending out the online polls, questionnaire and so forth.
(Holguín-Veras and et. al., 2021).
 After the proper understanding of these figures to predict the future of products or
services and also make changes respectively. Furthermore, the data which is concerned to
sociology will not be summarised by identifying the overall behaviour of an individual
but it is also leads to analyse the data of the overall society and group.
 It is important for the researcher to identify how many people they lead to select in terms
of observing their behaviour in an effective period of time. Therefore, it is important for
the researcher to put emphasis on both quantitative and qualitative data to organise the
research on sociology.
Alienation
 Alienation is the term which is used over the ages with varied and contradictory
meanings. It is undertaken as the situation when people feel disconnected from the group
in which they believe themselves as the part or familiar with the wider society.
 Here, human alienation has several types of symptoms including feeling left out of
conversation, feeling helpless, refusing to follow rules, not interacting with people and so
on. There are several types of human alienation such as cultural estrangement in which an
individual feel that they are being removed from the developed values.
 Another type of alienation is Normlessness in which an individual feel disconnected from
their social groups (Rowe, Ngwenyama and Richet, 2020).
 There are many types of causes of alienation of humans, and people are completely
dominated by occupational situations such as psychological causes related to people's
mental state and disability, professional situations, working hours in organizations, etc.
includes occupational causes that make you feel lonely.
 It is also important to get in touch with people who feel alienated. Mostly, marginalized
people believe that they end their lives by attempting suicide, so these types of people
need to be taken care of effectively and need special care instead of normal care.
 Therefore, for this type of people, it is appropriate treatment to spread positivity and
motivate people to live openly while respecting social life.
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Social Movements
 The term “social movement” refers to when a large group of people congregates in one
location to demand their rights. The informal structure, which has a shared aim as they
fight against anything wrong happening in their surroundings, is the primary goal of each
member of the social movement.
 For instance, the movements of “Black Lives Matter” is the social movement in which
people speak against the practices and actions which were held in society like
discrimination among the black and white skin people.
 People gather to confront the parliament and take to the streets to put pressure on the
government to enact stringent rules and legislation to end widespread discrimination
against black people (Borda, 2018).
 Further, another example of social movements is “Guild Socialism Movement” that was
held in England during 1906 in which the workers of factors stop working in their
factories and also move towards the street to speak or raise their voice to delegate their
duties and powers towards the workers who are working within an industry.
 They also expect their employers to treat them with respect and dignity, as deserving
members of the team. Following this movement, a variety of rules and laws relating to
employee rights were enacted.
 As a result, it has been determined that a social movement is an action taken by social
groups in order to persuade their government to adopt successful methods that will assist
them improve their quality of life. As a result, it is critical for social groups to concentrate
on the goal of their social movement, which must be legally correct.
Sustainability
 Sustainability is referred to the effective use of natural resources in suitable manner that
needs to be present effectively without compromising the requirements and needs of
future generation. Here, the objective of sustainability is to prevent the natural resources
from the depletion and their impact on the overall environment (Liu, 2018).
 In this, companies are developing an effective framework with the objective to achieve
their goals by eliminating the carbon footprints, getting suitable raw materials by fair
trading, eliminating energy use and opting zero-waste packaging.
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 Here, the framework put emphasis on long term objectives instead of short term that
include the several factors such as human, social and environmental.
 The sustainability of business is an effective practice where the business run its
operations without impact the environment in negative manner.
 “Going Green” is the effective concept in which business leads to run its operations that
contribute towards the healthy planet and having less or no impact over the society and
environment.
Importance of Sustainability
 Opting the sustainable approach is useful to eliminate the overall cost of business. By
this, the initial investment is high as it leads to generate the huge return in long term.
 For instance, by eliminating the use of energy they can contribute in terms of saving
money or effective use of organic material for the effective production process.
 Here, organisations with effective objective of contribution towards the betterment of
society leads to create positive image that depict the business priorities of society over
money.
 The objective of company is for the sustainable growth that leads to generate the
innovative ideas and strategies for the suitable survival which is useful for company to
achieve competitive advantage over others.
SECTION 2
“Community and social cohesion are in decline in the contemporary society.” Discuss
The process of developing shared values and communities of interpretation, eliminating
income disparities, and encouraging the production of meaning in which individuals are
participating in a common endeavour and face problems as members of the same community is
referred to as social cohesiveness. The quality of society that depicts the interdependence among
society's individuals is referred to as social cohesiveness (Murillo, Ayalew and Hernandez,
2021). It can be said that social cohesion is the decline stage due to the enhancement of social
and shortage of economic inclusive growth among the world. The classification among people
and communities occur due to the differences in ideologies and material conditions.
Several theories have tried to analyse the reason among the shortage of social cohesion.
From which Karl Marx was the influential thinker who looked at the material differences as it
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leads to impact the social cohesion among the different class. Here, the contribution of Marxism
to social conflict theory offer the important look at some reason regarding the shortage of social
cohesion. The Marxist perspective emphasises systems and tensions over upkeep, and it argues
using the classical flicked that is ubiquitous in capitalist society (Mitra and et. al., 2017).
Individuals fall into defined relationships that are indispensable and independent of their will,
resulting in the elimination of social cohesion.
Despite from this, the conservative viewpoint on the social cohesion is that the individuals
leads to integrate society which are not able to form the communities with social cohesion due to
the shortage of models. Here, morality and the code of conduct regarding the society helped
societies of past to maintain social cohesion for the longer period of time which is absent from
existing tie period (Nicklett, Lohman and Smith, 2017). Here, the objective lean towards the
sense of homogeneity in terms of social cohesion. In that case, social cohesion is the form of
unity that develop a unified community for the longer period of time.
Belonging against isolation, engagement versus non-involvement, inclusion versus
exclusion, and so on are among the five dimensions of the social equation. Individual alienation
and isolation are on the rise in today’s society, owing to a variety of factors such as bad health,
disease, a sense of being cut off from one’s family, a lack of transportation, or work concerns.
Multiculturalism has enhanced the inclusion of numerous members all over the world, but it also
represents discriminatory attitudes toward immigrants and other social groups that are increasing
globally.
The low degree of numerous dimensions of social cohesion represent the reasons for the
current decline in social cohesion. Exclusion and isolation are also having a negative impact on
community cohesion. The major feature of social cohesion mutually depicts the solidarity,
strength of social relations, loyalty, shared values, trust and sense of belongingness among
people regarding the elimination of exclusion and inequality. Digital technology has aided in the
effective establishment of a virtual society in which societies lack trust and unity around
common principles that are easily destroyed (Becker and Woessmann, 2018). Furthermore, in the
virtual world, strong and loyal connections are formed, and the lack of real interaction restricts
the establishment of a sense of belonging. Furthermore, cyberbullying causes the whole notion to
become more widespread on digital platforms and social connections, resulting in increased
exclusion and unfair treatment of various groups.
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CONCLUSION
Therefore, the research on social groups undertake the quantitative and qualitative data from
which the alienation is the concept in which people need loneliness as they lead to maintain
distance from their social groups. It is also analysed that social movements are done in regard of
influencing government to accept their demand and develop norms regarding human rights. Also,
the sustainability is the process in which companies put emphasis on fulfilling the needs by
saving the resources for future. As a result, the modern society does not rate well in terms of
social cohesion. The lack of social cohesion can be linked to the conflict theory in Marxism, and
the class is divided with isolated people. The lack of resources for eradicating morals and
societal weaknesses is one reason that has contributed to the current collapse in social cohesion.
Cyberbullying and a lack of physical interaction and communication have an influence on social
cohesion and the formation of strong communities. As a result, a lack of social cohesion has an
influence on the community as a group with loyalty and trust that are not developed digitally.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Becker, S.O. and Woessmann, L., 2018. Social cohesion, religious beliefs, and the effect of
Protestantism on suicide. Review of economics and statistics, 100(3), pp.377-391.
Borda, O.F., 2018. Social movements and political power in Latin America. In The making of
social movements in Latin America (pp. 303-316). Routledge.
Choi, Y.J. and Matz-Costa, C., 2018. Perceived neighborhood safety, social cohesion, and
psychological health of older adults. The Gerontologist, 58(1), pp.196-206.
Holguín-Veras, J and et. al., 2021. Freight mode choice: Results from a nationwide qualitative
and quantitative research effort. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and
Practice, 143, pp.78-120.
Leddy-Owen, C., 2020. Bringing the State Back into the Sociology of Nationalism: The Persona
Ficta Is Political. Sociology, 54(6), pp.1088-1104.
Liu, Y., 2018. Introduction to land use and rural sustainability in China. Land use policy, 74,
pp.1-4.
Mitra, S and et. al., 2017. Developing risk or resilience? Effects of slum upgrading on the social
contract and social cohesion in Kibera, Nairobi. Environment and Urbanization, 29(1),
pp.103-122.
Murillo, R., Ayalew, L. and Hernandez, D.C., 2021. The association between neighborhood
social cohesion and sleep duration in Latinos. Ethnicity & health, 26(7), pp.1000-1011.
Nicklett, E.J., Lohman, M.C. and Smith, M.L., 2017. Neighborhood environment and falls
among community-dwelling older adults. International journal of environmental
research and public health, 14(2), p.175.
Rowe, F., Ngwenyama, O. and Richet, J.L., 2020. Contact-tracing apps and alienation in the age
of COVID-19. European Journal of Information Systems, 29(5), pp.545-562.
Volpato, G. and King, E.G., 2019. From cattle to camels: trajectories of livelihood adaptation
and social-ecological resilience in a Kenyan pastoralist community. Regional
Environmental Change, 19(3), pp.849-865.
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