At Manchester University, the contribution of the sociological perspective and the discipline of to a liberal arts education is at least threefold:

• As a science, sociology seeks to understand and explain the social world through systematic, critical thinking and the application of empirical methods.

• As a social science, sociology seeks to understand and explain how we create and maintain shared patterns of thought, belief, judgment, and behavior, and how we are in turn shaped and constrained by those patterns.

• As a liberal art, the sociological perspective reminds us that values are embodied in and transmitted through social structures that express and encourage the realization of the social justice and peace.