Political sociology – a tool to question ideologies

MSc student, Daniela Wulf, discusses why she studies Political Sociology. My first tentative encounters with politics occurred rather late in my teenage years and consisted of watching political debates on television. They were imposed upon me as a desperate teacher’s measure to fight the acute lack of general knowledge exhibited by his students. Since debates about the latest government policy were not exactly a priority among those who made up my social environment, I was blissfully unaware of much of the world and its problems for a large part of my life. When I decided it was time to see a bit further than the end of my nose, I was irked by how political debate, whether on television, at the dinner table, in the class room or even in parliament, often seemed replete with rhetoric based on rigid ideologies rather than facts. Participants always appeared to find data to support their cause, even when this directly contradicted the data cited by their adversaries. The contradictory nature of the arguments and the pertinacity with which each side defended their position left me confused and dissatisfied.