The power of sociology lies in the fact that it allows you to gain insight into literally any subject. Want to study pet ownership in Kenosha, Wisconsin? Sociology can help you with that. Interested in learning about beauty standards in light of the summer blockbuster Barbie? Sociology can help. How about studying how AI technology impacts family dynamics in wealthy versus poor countries? Yes, sociology can do that, too. Sociology can assist in understanding such a wide range of topics because, on some level, everything is about relationships in society, and sociology is the scientific study of social relationships, institutions, and societies. To further illustrate the power of sociology, let’s turn our attention to a more serious issue: the plight of a Muslim ethnic group known as the Rohingya. In the end, we will see that sociology can be used to analyze and better understand the experience of people, even in the most desperate of circumstances.
The Rohingya are a stateless people. In other words, they don’t have a country to call home. While formally, most of their population lived in Myanmar, in 2017, military-sponsored attacks drove them out. The root causes of this ethnic conflict are the government-instituted discriminatory policies that have been imposed by the nation’s ruling Buddhist majority since the 1970s. These include, but are not limited to, restrictions on Rohingya education, employment, marriage, and family planning. Rohingya couples in some parts of Myanmar are even prohibited from having more than two children.
