6,078 articles
Sociocultural evolution
Sociocultural evolution is the change over time of non-biological aspects of human society. Covers 19th-century unilineal evolutionism (Tylor, Morgan), the Boasian critique, modern cultural evolutionary theory, and gene-culture coevolution.
Sociodrama
Sociodrama is a group action method founded by J. L. Moreno in which the group, not an individual, enacts social situations to solve problems and clarify values.
Sociology
Sociology is the social science studying society, social groups, relationships, and institutions, from family to global processes. Also called the study of social behavior; distinguished by its group-level analysis, mixed methods, and founders Comte, Durkheim, and Weber.
Sociology of religion
Sociology of religion: the empirical social-scientific study of religion in its social context, founded by Durkheim, Weber, and Marx; central debates cover secularization theory, religious market and rational choice models, and insecurity theory.
Sociology of the family
Sociology of the family: sociological study of the family as a social institution, using functionalist, conflict, symbolic interactionist, and feminist perspectives; covers Parsons, Goode, industrialization, and family diversity.
Sociometry
Sociometry is a quantitative research method measuring acceptance and rejection between individuals in a group, introduced by J. L. Moreno in his 1934 book Who Shall Survive?
Sodder children disappearance
Sodder children disappearance: 1945 Fayetteville, West Virginia house fire after which Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jennie, and Betty Sodder were never seen again; no remains were found, and the parents' four-decade abduction campaign remains unresolved.
Sodomy
Sodomy, from Latin peccatum Sodomiticum, is a legal term for anal and oral intercourse historically criminalized; criminalized from Justinian's 538 novella and the 1120 canons of Nablus, spread by British colonialism, and struck down in the US by Lawrence v. Texas (2003).
Sodomy law
Sodomy laws criminalize sexual acts deemed unnatural, historically anal and oral sex, also called buggery or crimes against nature. Originating in English law (Buggery Act 1533) and spread by colonial penal codes, they remain in about 63 UN member states; Lawrence v. Texas ended them in the US in 2003.
Sodomy laws in the United States
Sodomy laws in the United States: state statutes criminalizing oral and anal sex, universal until Illinois's 1961 repeal, upheld in Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), invalidated by Lawrence v. Texas (2003), with 12 dormant statutes remaining as of 2023.
SOGIE Equality Bill
SOGIE Equality Bill, also SOGIESC Equality Bill or Anti-Discrimination Bill: long-pending Philippine legislation first filed in 2000 to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, expression, and sex characteristics, with fines up to PHP 250,000; still unenacted.
Sojourner Truth
Sojourner Truth (Isabella Van Wagenen, c. 1797-1883), New York-born abolitionist and women's rights orator; won the 1828 case recovering her son Peter; the famous 'Ain't I a Woman?' refrain comes from Gage's 1863 version, not the 1851 transcript.
Solidarity
Solidarity, as coined by Émile Durkheim in The Division of Labor in Society (1893), means social cohesion, mechanical solidarity from shared likeness and repressive law, organic solidarity from specialized interdependence and restitutive law.
Solitude
Solitude is chosen, voluntary aloneness, distinct from loneliness, the negative dissatisfaction with one's social life. Covers its definition, historical and cultural meanings, psychological well-being effects, and how enforced isolation differs from chosen solitude.
Solomon Northup
Solomon Northup (born c. 1808) was a free New York carpenter kidnapped in Washington, D.C., in 1841, enslaved twelve years in Louisiana, rescued 1853; his memoir Twelve Years a Slave, edited by David Wilson, inspired the 1984 Gordon Parks and 2013 Steve McQueen films.
Solomon's paradox
Solomon's paradox is the finding that people reason more wisely about others' social problems than their own, named after King Solomon. Grossmann and Kross (2014) showed self-distancing eliminates the asymmetry; a 2023 meta-analysis found d = 0.317.
Solution-focused brief therapy
Solution-focused brief therapy (SFBT) is a brief psychotherapy that builds solutions from clients' strengths and future goals rather than analyzing problems, typically in about five sessions.
Somali Bantu refugee resettlement
Somali Bantu refugee resettlement was the transfer of about 12,000 Somali Bantu refugees from Kenyan camps to US cities beginning in May 2003, the largest resettlement program ever undertaken in Africa.
Somali clans
Somali clans are patrilineal descent groups organized into clan-families such as the Darod, Hawiye, Dir, and Rahanweyn, bound by xeer contracts and diya blood-compensation groups, central to Somali identity, security, and post-1991 politics.
Somali people
Somali people (Soomaalida) are a Cushitic ethnolinguistic group of the Horn of Africa, 25-30 million strong, Shafi'i Sunni, clan-organized, speaking Somali, spanning Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya and a global diaspora.
Somali refugees in Kenya
Somali refugees in Kenya are people who fled Somalia, mostly after civil war broke out in 1991, and live largely in the Dadaab and Kakuma camps and in Nairobi.
Somatotype and constitutional psychology
Somatotype and constitutional psychology: William H. Sheldon's 1940s theory rating endomorphy, mesomorphy, and ectomorphy on 1–7 scales and linking body build to temperament and delinquency; now discredited, with the Heath–Carter method surviving in sports science.
Somaya Bashir
Somaya Bashir (סומיה בשיר, born 1974) is an Arab-Israeli psychologist and activist from Jatt, founder of We Have No Other Land and Insan, Women Wage Peace leader, and the first Arab woman elected to a realistic slot on Israel's Democrats party Knesset slate.
Something old
Something old: first item of the English bridal luck rhyme "something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and a sixpence in her shoe," a Victorian-era custom symbolizing continuity, new beginnings, borrowed happiness, and fidelity.
Somnophilia
Somnophilia is a paraphilia, coined by John Money in 1986, involving sexual arousal toward sleeping or unconscious people; distinct from sexsomnia, it becomes a paraphilic disorder only with distress, impairment, or consent violations.
Sonia Sutcliffe
Sonia Sutcliffe, nee Sonia Szurma, English school teacher, married Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe in 1974; won 1989 Private Eye libel case, lost 1990 News of the World case, divorced 1994, remarried Michael Woodward 1997.
Sophie Flay
Sophie Flay (born 1996) is an American broadcast journalist, daughter of chef Bobby Flay, co-anchoring ABC's World News Now and GMA First Look since 2025 after ABC7 Los Angeles reporting and Food Network shows The Flay List and Bobby and Sophie on the Coast.
Sophie Rain
Sophie Rain (@sophieraiin) is an American OnlyFans creator from Miami and Tampa who launched her page in May 2023, co-founded the Bop House with Aishah Sofey in December 2024, and reports over $100 million in gross earnings.
Sorbs
Sorbs (Serbski lud), a West Slavic ethnic minority of about 60,000 in Lusatia, eastern Germany; smallest Slavic group, speaking Upper and Lower Sorbian, concentrated in Saxony and Brandenburg.
Sotho people
The Sotho people, also called the Basotho, are a Bantu-speaking people of southern Africa who speak Sesotho and live mainly in Lesotho and South Africa.