Message from the Chair

Welcome to Jeonbuk National University's Department of Sociology.

Sociology is a study that systematically explores the various relationships, institutions, cultures, and interactions that make up human society. From microscopic dimensions, such as individual daily experiences and interactions, to macroscopic levels, such as nations, institutions, structures, and world systems, sociology analyzes social phenomena in multiple layers. Almost every social topic is studied, including family and friends, education, labor, economy, politics, gender, and social movements. Sociology aims to understand how society is shaped, maintained, and changed by revealing the structures, power, and mechanisms of inequality that exist behind our daily lives.

These investigations are not solely based on empirical intuition or common sense, but are based on rigorous social science methodology. Both quantitative and qualitative studies are utilized in sociology. Quantitative research is a powerful tool for systematically understanding social phenomena, revealing general trends and structural patterns of social phenomena by analyzing large-scale data. Qualitative research is an excellent way to deeply understand human behavior and the process of social meaning formation, providing important insights into complex contexts that are difficult to reduce to numbers, symbolic meanings, and motivations for social behavior. Sociology complementarily utilizes quantitative and qualitative methodologies to develop the ability to think about society in various ways.

The importance of sociology is growing in an era where artificial intelligence, automation, climate crisis, pandemic, demographic change, gender conflict, and social inequality work in combination, as it is today. Sociology analyzes the social impact and structural changes brought about by technological and institutional changes from various angles, clarifies the complexity of human life and social interactions in a rapidly changing reality, and provides theoretical tools to imagine new possibilities and alternatives from them.

Sociology majors are active in a variety of fields, including public policy, civil society, social welfare, media and media, corporate personnel and marketing, and social data analysis, as well as academia and research institutes. Sociology develops the ability to think critically about society, construct problems, and interpret complex realities structurally, rather than train specific job skills. Therefore, the capacity of sociology is becoming more prominent in modern societies that are fast to change and are highly uncertain.

After all, sociology is a study that constantly asks fundamental questions such as 'why this is happening', 'what structural factors are behind it', and 'how we can make a better society'. Sociology is not just a study of society, but a study that understands humans living in society and explores the possibility of coexistence. We invite you on an intellectual journey to take a new look at the world surrounding individuals and to understand humans and society in it.