Sociology has been on a downward decline of public relevance and has taken a backseat as such decline has increased. The relationship between sociology and politics have shown a noticeable separation in modern times, for what seems like good reason. Some sociologists were unaware that they were only doing studies based entirely on what is popular which then itemizes the people they would study and leave them forgotten once a new trend of interest came around. Within this separation sociology became more academia based and less public which gave sociologist a bad reputation in that there was a focus on data collection and empirical data but with the exception of sociological journals there was very little exposure of it all.

 As members of society we need the studies done by sociologists to make well informed decisions, however there needs to be a balance of education and activism. Catching the attention of a crowd as well as powerful people requires more than simply self-education and journal publications. Sociologists need to be able to take their knowledge and make it creative and simple for everyone to be able to appreciate and hopefully be able to get on board with. It takes a crowd and coverage to the masses to turn education into a positive change in the society we live in.

That all being said, there needs to be education within activism. A well based platform finds its stability in a research based fact, and builds from there. Especially when it comes to sociology, fact gathered from research and data must be more important than what may be considered professional opinion. Though journals are a primary tool for measuring sociology success, they have become outdated and are to the point where they are reaching irrelevance when it comes to getting data and research out to the public, so we are forced to think outside of the journal. Mainstreaming ideas and rewording our work to make it easier to digest is essential for the survival of public sociology. However, this should not be mistaken for one sided evidence. Especially in politics we see where political toxicity leads to the assumption that factual evidence was collected simply to use in a debate when in reality sociology is not based in proving opinion, it is used to determine trends and facts in society through data and research. The spread of which should be public domain, and therefor should be portrayed in such a way that anyone can understand and learn from it.


Citations:
Anon. 2014. “How Sociologists Made Themselves Irrelevant.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved September 11, 2017 (http://www.chronicle.com/article/How-Sociologists-Made/150249/).
Anon. n.d. Everyday Sociology Blog. Retrieved September 11, 2017 (http://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/2013/07/the-promise-and-perils-of-public-sociology.html).
Anon. 2013. “Why activism and academia don’t mix.” orgtheory.net. Retrieved September 11, 2017 (https://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2013/03/31/why-activism-and-academia-dont-mix/).
Pages, The Society. 2012. “How Academics Can Become Relevant.” Cyborgology. Retrieved September 11, 2017 (https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2012/01/23/how-academics-can-become-relevant/).
Journals.sagepub.com. (2017). Available at: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1536504213476244 [Accessed 12 Sep. 2017].

Hello folks, again my name is Jake and I'm starting my first blog post this afternoon. I'll be starting off with a bit of information about myself to help you to get to know who I am a little bit better. That being said, I am a proud Adirondack 46er, this means that I have climbed every mountain originally surveyed to be over 4,000 feet above sea level in the ADK park. It is such an important accomplishment to me in part because it took my father and I eleven years to complete (starting with Mt.Marcy when at age 8). What's more is that we finished despite of a 3 year span when my father was fighting cancer and recovering.

Now onto the sociology. I personally define sociology as the study of people, their behavior due to development, and their environment. With this belief, the sociological perspective then becomes how one sees the world once they understand the lens of the study of sociology. It requires looking at people's behavior from more of an academic standpoint and one that i more inquisitive. To explain, I am suggesting that the sociological perspective should make you look at society as abnormal and then question what is abnormal and why is it the way that it is. It becomes useful when considering examining the correlation of people to their environment and with this the perspective becomes useful for development of people as a whole. Understanding is the first step to evolution into something or in this case someone more open to experiences and opportunity (possibly due to change in external environment). Which now brings us to the uses for sociology and the sociological perspective. From a criminal justice perspective sociology becomes especially useful in finding tendencies to help prevent future crime. Again, sociology deals with people and how their day to day lives are different from person to person based on their development and their environment. So, to study people, is to study behavior which can lead to highlighting crime based sociology which can lead to further crime prevention.