Welcome to Sociology
Jan 20, 2016
Welcome to Sociology
Everyday Actor
Everyday Actor (Taken-for-granted wisdom)◦Practical knowledge to get through daily life
Skills of an Everyday Actor
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYmrg3owTRE&feature=related
• Language–Hugh Laurie and Ellen
• Your “practical knowledge”?
Everyday Actor vs Social Analyst
• Social Analyst (Questions Everything)
• Seeks information that is: – Systematic – Comprehensive – Coherent and– Clear
The Social Analyst
• Takes the perspective of stranger in social world
• Questions most everything “Everyday Actor” assumes is true or real– Language– Gender roles– Power relationships
The Beginner’s Mind
The Beginner’s MindOpposite of expert’s mind. To explore social world, important toclear our minds of:• Stereotypes • Expectations, and • Opinions
• We are more receptive to experiences.
What is Sociology?
Sociology is a social science
Levels of Analysis
Macrosociology: Focus -> Large scale social structures◦Family, Economy, Education, Healthcare
Microsociology: Focus -> Social interactions ◦Friendship groups, work groups, peers
Social Institutions
Social Structures that provide basic social needsExamples:
◦Education◦Economics◦Politics◦Family
What basic social needs do these meet?
The Macro-Micro Continuum
Ways of Knowing
• What do you know?
• How do you know it?
• Science– Logical system that bases knowledge on direct,
systematic observation
• Scientific Sociology– Study of society based on systematic observation of
social behavior
• Empirical Evidence– Information we can verify with our senses
Society
Shapes the lives of people in various categories such as: Children Adults Women and men Rich and poor
Children
Women
Men
Rich People & Poor People
Sociological Imagination
• Term coined by C. Wright Mills
• Mills says, “To understand social life, we must understand the intersection between biography and history.”
Sociological Imagination
C. Wright Mills (1959)C. Wright Mills (1959)The Sociological Imagination helps people understand:
1. Society
2. Society’s effects on their lives
C. Wright Mills
Described as an ‘American Utopian' - committed to social change, and angered by the oppression he saw around him
Mills argued that a small group of men within the political, military and corporate spheres - the power elite - made ‘the decisions that reverberated into all areas of American life’
Sociological Imagination
SociologicalImagination
Culture Shock
Happens when you:
–Experience disorientation
–Upon entering new environment
Culture Shock
Culture Shock—Food
Culture Shock
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBND33BNfZw
***Sociology’s Family Tree:Theories and Theorists
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What is a Social Theory?
• Organized and verifiable ideas – Explain society & social behavior
• Creates order
• Helps us make sense of world – And our place in world
Sociological Theories
Not just how things happen, but
•Why?
Social Context
18th & 19th century
New system of production:◦Industrial revolution◦Capitalism◦Colonialism
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Social Context
• Enlightenment: New Ideas• Humanism
• Importance of human rather than divine matters
• Science• Knowledge of physical world by
•Observation & Experimentation• New political forms
• Democracies
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Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
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• Laid groundwork for future sociologists
• Sociology to be treated like scientific discipline
• Coined the term “Sociology” (1839)
• Society=Organism
Harriet Martineau
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• Social activist • Labor unions• Abolition of slavery• Women’s suffrage
• Traveled to United States
• Translated Comte’s work from French to English
Harriet Martineau
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Herbert Spencer
• Society=Organism
• Societies adapt to changing environment
• “Survival of the Fittest”• Lamarkianism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cxfbq4evdTY
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Herbert Spencer
Émile Durkheim
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• Émile Durkheim worked to establish sociology as academic discipline.
• Social factors that hold society together
• Studied relationship between social factors and suicide
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Emile Durkheim
Karl Marx
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• Karl Marx was a German philosopher and political activist.
• Marx contributed to conflict theory.
Karl Marx
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• Marx believed that capitalism was creating social inequality
• between the bourgeoisie, who owned the means of production (money, factories, natural resources, and land),
• and the proletariat, who were the workers.
• According to Marx, this inequality leads to class conflict.
Karl Marx
Max Weber
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• Max Weber also interested society becoming industrialized.
• Concerned with process of rationalization,– applying economic logic to all human activity.
• Believed that contemporary life was filled with disenchantment
• Result of dehumanizing features of modern societies.
Max Weber
•Character of modernized, bureaucratic, secularized western society, -- Science is more highly valued than belief, -- Processes oriented toward rational goals -- As opposed to traditional society
Disenchantment
George Herbert Mead
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• George Herbert Mead was interested in the connection between the individual and society.
• In Mind, Self and Society (1934), Mead describes how the individual mind and self arises out of the social process.
• “I” and the “Me”
George Herbert Mead
Erving Goffman
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• Erving Goffman interested in the “self”
• Goffman used the term dramaturgy to describe the way people strategically present themselves to others.
Erving Goffman
MODERN SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT
Structural Functionalism
Society as: Stable Ordered system Interrelated parts
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Structural Functionalism
• Social institutions: Meet needs of society–Family–Education–Politics–Economy–Function
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Conflict Theory
Social conflict basis: Of society and Social change
Source of Conflict: Inequality
Conflict theory
• Focus:
–Dominance–Competition–Social change
Conflict theory
Materialist Labor and Economic reality
Critical of existing arrangements
Dynamic historical change Inevitable
Symbolic Interactionism
Interaction
Symbols
Shared meaning
Social creation of reality
Feminist Theory
Gender inequalities Nature Source
Gender structures social world
Goal: Eliminate inequalities
Queer Theory
Sexual identity is social construct
No sexual category fundamentally deviant or normal
Questions basis for all social categories
Postmodernist Theory
• Social reality is:• Diverse• Changing• No truth, reason, right, order, or
stability• Everything is relative & temporary
Theory in Everyday Life
Theory in Everyday Life
Perspective Level of Analysis Focus of Analysis Case Study