Sociology Unit 1 Introduction to Sociology & the Sociological Perspective

Unit 1: Introduction to Sociology & the Sociological Perspective Key Terms: ● Sociological perspective - the special point of view of sociology that sees general patterns of society in the lives of particular people. ● Sociological imagination - An awareness of the relationship between an individual and the wider society, both today and in the past. ● Verstehen - empathetic understanding of human behavior. ● Structure - the distinctive, stable arrangement of institutions whereby human beings in a society interact and live together. ● Agency - the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. ● Social construction of reality - theory of knowledge that examines the development of jointly-constructed understandings of the world that form the basis for shared assumptions about reality. The theory centers on the notion that meanings are developed in coordination with others rather than separately within each individual. ● Scientific method - a method of research in which a problem is identified, relevant data are gathered, a hypothesis is formulated from these data, and the hypothesis is empirically tested. ● Conventional wisdom - a generally accepted belief or theory. ● Demography - the study of human population dynamics. o Demographic transition - a model that describes population change over time. It suggests that populations grow along a predictable five-stage model. o Population explosion - a sudden, large increase in the size of a population. ● Theoretical perspectives - a set of assumptions about reality that inform the questions we ask and the kinds of answers we arrive at as a result. o Symbolic interaction - a micro-level theory that focuses on the relationships among individuals within a society. o Conflict theory - a theory that society is in a state of perpetual conflict because of competition for limited resources. o Feminist theory - the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. The Foundations of Sociology ● Sociology was created by philosopher Auguste Comte in the 1800s ○ Auguste Comte wanted a systematic way to study society and solve its basic problems. ○ Society: a group of people that share a culture and a territory. ○ While we may think that when we are alone we are away from society, everything around us, down to the music that we listen to, is a product of society. ○ For that reason, nothing is purely ours. What we claim to be ours is mostly influential of those around us. ● The main goal of sociology is to understand the social world through controlled and repeated observation. ○ It is the scientific study of society and human behavior! ○ In sociology, it is important to look for patterns or recurring characteristics and events. Sociological perspective 1. Seeing the general in the particular 2. Seeing the strange in the familiar Seeing the general in the particular is a way of trying to understand social behavior by placing it in its wider social context. ● Ex: You get stopped at a light next to a car that is playing music super loud. While you may just notice the song, a sociologist would notice how that choice may be a direct representation of that person's class, neighborhood, gender, or age. Seeing the strange in the familiar means approaching the everyday world as if you were seeing it for the first time. ● Ex: Why do we raise our hands in class but not at the dinner table? Why does red mean stop and green mean go? ● Seeing the strange in the familiar is a LOT harder to do because we are so familiar with our own society that everything seems normal. ● It is important to do these things because if we lead ourselves solely with common sense we will be misled. o For example: It was common sense and knowledge that it is not right for women to vote and for segregation to exist. If we use sociology, it can help us to understand problems like this and prevent them from happening in the future. ▪ Sociology brings us depth, understanding, and an explanation as to why things exist the way they do. Social location ● Social location: a map of society composed of different social groups and their relationship with each other. A person's social location is a way of classifying themselves by race, social class, gender, religion, etc. Social location is important because a person's life and the choices they make will be heavily influenced by their social location. ● Can contribute to the marginalization of a social group. ○ This means that this group occupies a position outside the centers of power. These are often racial, ethnic, or religious minorities, that tend to have a deeper understanding of how power operates. ● For some, their social location may limit their choices. ○ Some groups have legal rights and privileges that others don't. ○ The decision to go to college is also dependent on social location ■ Example: Does the class you grew up in view college as important or necessary? ■ Social location also affects what others have learned, and are taught, about you. ● There are many different kinds of power and many different kinds of inequality. ○ One lesser known example is of people that speak non standard accents commonly being viewed as less intelligent and judged more harshly than an English speaking counterpart. The English speaking person would not realize the power that they have for simply speaking without an accent while the person with a non standard dialect would be subjected to inequality. ● The main goal of sociology: ○ To use human behavior and societal characteristics to improve how we live and work with one another! The first sociologists looked around at their quickly changing societies and were driven to scientifically understand them. Paradigms ● Paradigm: a model for how you think about things. It is basically a set of concepts or theories that frames your perspective on a certain topic. ● Theoretical paradigms are the fundamental assumptions that sociologists have about the social world. This guides their thinking and research. ● All scientific disciplines make assumptions about the world and they use different perspectives depending on the given topic! Raw facts always need some kind of perspective in order to make them useful. So while being unbiased is never wrong bias and perspective is needed in order to make assumptions/interpret information. Macro and Micro ● A perspective shifted toward the Macro means looking at the bigger picture. ○ This means that you are looking at the overall picture of the structures that shape societies. ■ Looking at the Micro means focusing on the smaller details. ● This would mean focusing more on interactions between people. While these are two different focuses they are always connected! Asking micro questions can help to understand bigger macro patterns or observations. The Main Theoretical Paradigms of Sociology 1. Structural Functionalism - Originated with Emile Durkheim. This perspective makes the assumption that society is a complex system with parts that work together to promote stability and social order. One of the problems of this is that it sees society as functionally stable. This means that it will always be hard to undergo change especially since many parts rely on each other in order to function. This focuses on how large structures fit together. 2. Conflict Theory - The perspective where society is seen as being made up of different groups that struggle over specific resources like power, money, food, or status. In this perspective, change is necessary for society and is driven by change as a result of these conflicts. This focuses on how society defines sources of inequality and wealth. 3. Symbolic Interactionism - Associated with the work of Max Weber. This perspective understands sociology as the product of everyday social interactions. There is a large focus on the shared reality that people make through interacting with others. It looks at the world we create when we assign meaning to interactions and objects (For example, waving your hand essentially means nothing but since we all have mutually agreed it is a sign of hello/goodbye we associate waving our hand with saying hello/goodbye). Important Theorist & their contributions to Sociology Emile Durkheim ● Founder of the structural functionalist paradigm. Durkheim lived in France from 18581917. ● He lived in France during a time where the country was going through a lot of economic, technological, and cultural changes during the start of industrialization. As a witness to this, Durkheim was concerned with what kept societies together because he didn't want to see it fall apart again. He wanted to study society and what made it thrive or fall. He viewed society as a big organism that had different parts but in order to survive needed to work together in order to function successfully. ● His book “suicide” is the first book to use statistics to back up sociological research and arguments. ● He developed the idea of the common consciousness which is basically all of the beliefs, morals, and ideas that are social facts within a society (ex: Christmas). These beliefs hold coercive power. Not everyone may believe in these beliefs but because the majority do, many do not object it. Common consciousness holds a society together. ● Durkheim argued that crime strengthens the common consciousness. To him punishment served as public lessons of right and wrong. When a person is punished we are shown society's morals and how strong they are. ● He came up with the idea that social dysfunction is something that conflicts with the normal function of society. ● Durkheim argued that there is a strong link between societal structure and suicide due to social integration. He came to the conclusion that when people know their place in society and how they relate to others around them they are less likely to take their own life. When people are less strongly bound to their society they feel out of place. In his book “suicide”, he makes the point that suicide is heavily influenced by the structure of society Karl Marx ● Karl Marx set the foundation for the paradigm theory in sociology. His main focus was on the topic of freedom and this pushed him to explore topics like power, inequality, and how these things can lead to change. ● Marx believed that humans were poorly adapted to the natural world. In order for humans to survive we need to change our environment and Marx saw this as labor. He saw that in order to survive we need to work together to free ourselves of natural constraints (hunger, dying of thirst, things we must do to survive). However, by freeing ourselves of natural constraints we create social ones. ● He created the perspective of historical materialism. This looks at change over time, and it's materialism because it is concerned with how production is organized, and who has things like food, or money in terms of social class. ● He felt that politics or religion were secondary to the production and control of basic necessities like food and water. He believed that in order to even understand politics or religion, you needed to understand the material reality they were based on. ● Marx came up with the term superstructure to describe the view of the economy being the foundation of a society and politics, culture, and family ranking secondary. ● Known for his views on capitalism: working class (proletariat) vs. capitalists (bourgeois). The proletariat are defined by the fact that, while they work in the factories and use resources to make things, they don’t own the factories or the things they make. The bourgeoisie are defined by the fact that they do own the factories and the things that are made in them. Marx believed that this divide in society leads to exploitation. W.E.B Dubois ● One of the earliest American sociologists and was also one of the first proponents of the race-conflict theory. ● Dubois was born in Massachusetts in 1868. During that period of time, race was considered a biological construct. Slavery and Segregation was seen as “natural consequences” of the “inferiority of” African Americans to white people. As he travelled for college, Dubois saw how differently black people were treated in different areas. ● His work reveals the idea of double-consciousness. He said that “living as a member of a non-dominant race, creates a fracture in your sense of identity within that society”. His personal feeling of double-consciousness fueled his work which was centered around the disparities/conflicts of people of different races (AKA race-conflict theory). ● Dubois took a position at the University of Pennsylvania in 1896 conducting a study of the city’s Seventh Ward, published in 1899 as The Philadelphia Negro. The study is considered one of the earliest examples of statistical work being used for sociological purposes, with extensive fieldwork resulting in hundreds of interviews conducted doorto-door by Dubois.