What is Sociology, and How Does it Differ from Psychology - Answer Key

ESSAY 1. What is sociology, and how does it differ from psychology? ANS: The response should define sociology as a science that typically studies humans and human behavior in groupings of some sort. This can be juxtaposed in any number of ways to psychology as a discipline because psychology has a tendency to study humans as individuals. The best responses might mention personal troubles being the typical realm of psychology and public issues being the realm of sociology. However, even better responses will travel outside of the textbook and perhaps mention that there is an area of study where these two disciplines meet: social psychology. 2. Use your sociological imagination to think about the social processes that go into writing an essay for a college course. What is involved? ANS: The response to this question could do a couple of things. First, it should situate writing an essay socially by talking about social and institutional processes that go into writing an essay. For example, it is typically done on a computer, so students might talk about what makes possible the computers in their laps (or on their desks) possible. This could include free-trade agreements, mining for rare materials, low-paid workers in mostly underdeveloped countries assembling parts, and so on. Second, the response might also focus on the social processes behind getting ideas—learning from a teacher, who learned from someone else; discussing ideas with colleagues or fellow students; refining the contents of the essay through debate; and so on. Of course, essays could also do a bit of both of these things—the point should be placing the activity into a wider social context. 3. How would Karl Marx describe and analyze the contemporary United States? ANS: Answers should focus on power and class divisions within our society but could take positive or negative turns (or both) depending on the narrative the student constructs. For example, negatively, students may focus on the middle-class squeeze, increasing income inequality, the rise of corporate personhood and power, the merging of state and corporate power, and so on. Positively, students might focus on the development of minimum wage laws, greater access to health care, increased social mobility (certainly when compared with Marx’s time), and social provisions for the poor, such as welfare, food stamps, and the like. 4. W. E. B. Du Bois and Harriet Martineau are the two neglected founders mentioned in the textbook. What might this neglect tell us about the history of sociology as a discipline? ANS: Responses to this question should intertwine the identities of the theorists (an African American and a woman) and what those theorists studied and added to the sociological literature (largely, studies of African Americans’ and women’s experiences). This tells us a number of things about the discipline that students might mention: (1) It was largely developed and systematized in Europe, so many of the founders of the science are European. (2) It reflects the patriarchal roots of most sciences, founded by men and largely focusing on men’s experiences. (3) It reflects the bias that a legacy of racism has left us with—with only one African American theorist added as an afterthought and largely remembered for studying African Americans. These kinds of responses could be argued in a number of ways but should reflect an understanding of gendered and racialized power, even within the sociological canon. 5. How might a sociologist influenced by symbolic interactionism explain gender in the contemporary United States? ANS: This could take a variety of interesting turns, but answers should focus on symbols and how we collectively construct meaning together. Students might focus on how masculinity and femininity are communicated through toys, media, entertainment, and such. Similarly, they might also focus on interactions between people and how approval and disapproval signal that certain kinds of gendered behaviors are “normal,” whereas others are deviant. Students might also question the very categories of man and woman and look at how historical processes shape our understanding of available categories. The larger point, however, should be those social processes of communication that teach us how to do gender “properly” according to societal standards. 6. What are the manifest and latent functions of public schools in the United States? ANS: Students should focus on the intended purposes of public schools for the manifest functions. They might mention providing free education for all citizens regardless of access to wealth, setting standards for basic educational levels for all citizens, keeping our citizens educated to be able to compete with other countries, and instilling certain values into members of our society, to name a few examples. Latent functions, in contrast, will focus on unintended consequences of public schooling. Here students might mention training children to be obedient to people in positions of authority, offering unequal educational access because of unequal funding of public schools, and providing a sort of free babysitter for parents who are working. 7. How is ideology used to justify the actions of the powerful in U.S. society? ANS: Students will answer this in a variety of ways, largely depending on their own ideological allegiances. Responses should show how groups or individuals with social power use dominant ideas to maintain that power. One possible response might be the way that faith in markets and the free market system allows wealthy people to continue to get wealthier without allowing for examinations into alternatives to the existing system. Another might point out that ideas that normalize the state’s role in the economy and, by extension, our lives, get in the way of market processes that could lead to a more efficient allocation of resources. Similar ideological understandings undergird other power relations, such as those that arise about gender, race, sexuality, ability, age, and so on. The larger point is that students should demonstrate that there are ideas in place that keep those relations of domination and subordination intact. 8. What is the difference between microsociology and macrosociology? What are some examples of each? ANS: Responses to this question might be rather short, and justifiably so. Microsociology refers to studies of everyday behavior among people, and macrosociology focuses on larger social systems and institutions, as well as investigations into their development. Creative students might show how these things interrelate (that is, everyday human behaviors reproduce social institutions, and social systems influence everyday human behaviors). Examples of microsociology should focus on those everyday processes that constitute much of life as we immediately recognize it, such as how people interact, facial (and other symbolic) cues, household conflicts, and so on. Examples of macrosociology should include investigations into large-scale institutions, such as the capitalist economy and the state, or how those institutions came to exist. 9. What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of ethnographic fieldwork? ANS: Generally, the strength of ethnographic fieldwork is that it produces rich data about complex social processes. The researcher experiences these social processes with his or her body, which means that broader social processes at work that would otherwise be left uncovered can be identified. However, ethnography is limited in that it can be used only to study small groups (i.e., a given researcher could not do participant observation with an entire nation). Similarly, ethnographic fieldwork is not generalizable to larger populations. 10. What are the strengths and limitations of surveys as a research method? ANS: The strength of surveys is that they allow researchers to collect information from large numbers of respondents. Because the data collected can (generally) be quantified, surveys also allow for precise measures and comparisons between groups or people. Surveys, however, are limited in that data collected may often be superficial—particularly with a bad research design. Standardized survey responses might gloss over important differences that intensive, qualitative interviews might uncover. Finally, surveys also contain the danger of people claiming beliefs and attitudes that they do not actually hold.