the problem with studying a subject is the stance you take against other fields of study. you're always free to create borders between your area and method of research and the others, but these borders will eventually seem less and less required and yours and other fields of study will run across each other, blurring borders and making the researcher question his need for them. this eventually will lead the researcher to remove these and bring other methods and fields of study into his/hers.
what we also need to understand is the relativity of one's interpretations. the aforementioned fields of study are created to make sense of a world that does not inheritly make sense itself. because the world itself does not have clear definitions, instead, it just has a constant flood of thoughts and actions. our senses perceive these thoughts and actions, and starting from day one, our brain assembles these into a framework. thus the things that were not suppressed in the subconscious become a filter for the future thoughts and actions that come in our way. and that creates the beautiful uniqueness of each human being. although a similarity between people that have been exposed to similar ideas do exist, the difference in experiences of individuals create a unique framework for every unique human being. but, nevertheless, we must base these framework on life experiences and material arguments, i.e. logical and rational sources. because if based on metaphysical ideas and logically inferior answers, the framework will only make sense to some people, disregarding others. this should not be the case if a communication is to be present, because although -due to the aforementioned and accepted relativity of ideas- frameworks do not need to be accepted when communicating, they do need to make sense.
and the concepts. concepts are crucial to the study of politics, which is a concept itself. concepts simply are aids to understanding the world and every single person would have a different body and use for a concept. but unlike the framework, the similarities between masses of people is even more crucial, because in the field of concepts, knowing what we think we mean when we use one is only as important as knowing what recognized sources of authorities about the concept commonly mean when they use it. so we need to create balance when using this tool, we need to be precise, but also quite broad.
but the understanding of these concepts, these studies greatly depend on our approach to our own understanding. great scholars usually study the mind behind the idea as much as they study the idea itself, because the assumptions and prejudices make up the framework, and the framework -or, the effect of the framework on perception to be more precise- define the idea. but some prejudices are hidden deep beneath the subconscious, how do we get these out? that starts the series of questions that we'll have to ask ourselves when we are studying politics, because without this question, there won't be any direction to our understanding.
politics is essentialy the means by which we order our social affairs and allocation of scarce resources especially underline this. this action is usually crucial to most affairs, social and not social, but the allocator almost always has an underlying principle or agenda that has social roots, most likely a wish to gain control is also present. this shows how social politics can be and how much it interacts with other areas like economics and sociology.
so what distinguishes political activity from politics? what makes an activity political and others not? it usually is related -again- to the frameworks and relative ideas. this time, the relativity is tied to the concept of legitimacy. for people who define themselves as legitimate political bodies the only activities that can be considered political are the activities conducted between themselves and other political bodies that they deem legitimate. they usually shun other activities and avoid labelling them as political so that they wouldn't legitimize them. a contemprorary example of this would be the concept of politically charged terrorists being treated as political prisoners.
so where does the politics end then? if only legitimate bodies of political power define which activities are political and which activities are not, then what happens when there are contradictions? what happens if defining an activity as not political is actually very political itself? there had been, might be and will be cases like this in politics where definitions and principles result in hidden (unintentional) or apparent (intentional) contradictions. sometimes the wish for non-politicizing activities will be very political itself, thus giving us the idea that whatever legitimate political bodies do will essentially be political.
so what a researcher that focuses on the area of politics must do then is to not exclude any part of the human social interaction system from the concept of politics. everything socially related to the act of allocating scarce resources, no matter how small or how unlikely to be viewed as political by the legitimate sources of political power, contains a certain amount of politics.
nor should a researcher exclude activities that are not as socially liberal as others. whether a public discussion about the allocation of scarce resources, i.e. a social activitiy takes place or not, if the actions that were resulted from the activity directly or indirectly affects the ordering of social affairs, then that action can be considered political. it's ideal that the people being affected by this have some power or influence over how and why their social affairs are being ordered, but whether they do or not is irrelevant to the definition of politics.
So what criteria should be used to decide what is or is not relevant to politics? If something is directly related to the way social relationships and actions are conducted/viewed/results then it essentially makes up the concept of politics, so, therefore, determining how socially charged an action is quite possibly the best criteria to be used.
