INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY, LECTURE ONE

C. Wright Mills: The Promise

• SOC 101:  Introduction to SociologyFall 2015

• Instructor:  David Wood• Email: david.wood@iaaprograms.com• Course Website: www.david-a-wood.com/sociology-101/

Syllabus• Synthesis Paper # 1:                                 15%

• Synthesis Paper # 2:                                 15%

• Term Paper:                                               15%

• Final Presentation:                                   10%

• Presentations:                                            25%

• Participation and Assignments:           20%

Synthesis Papers• Remember the Reading Response discussion we had?• These will be highly similar.• They will require you to respond to several readings at a

time, and using the evidence from those readings, return a response

Final Paper and Presentation• This will be both a research paper and a memoir,

discussing the sociology of your own life as a high school student in China preparing for college in the United States.

Presentations• Throughout the semester, I will ask you to lead class

discussions on the readings. • These will begin in week 3.• Really simple – • Just say via PPT what the reading was about and give

several discussion questions.• In other words, do what I’m doing.• I will assign dates on these in the next class.

Participation• A huge part of your grade will simply be showing up and

talking about the readings. • Everyday, I will ask everyone to give a short response to

the readings prior to discussing the readings. • I’m not expecting something that will bring a tear to my

eye, but you should have some reply of some sort at this point.

• In every discussion I will expect questions, and I myself will ask several discussion questions of you.

• Each week I will grade everyone on participation.• Occasionally, we will have in-class assignments.

• SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES• WEEKS 1•  • “The Promise,” C. Wright Mills (pp. 1-7, Ferguson)• “The Forest, the Trees, and the One Thing,” Allan G.

Johnson (supplemental reading)• “Teenage Wasteland: Suburbia’s Dead-End Kids,” Donna

Gaines (pp. 7-19, Ferguson)

• DOING SOCIAL RESEARCH• WEEKS 2•  •  “Finding Out How the Social World Works,” Michael

Schwalbe (pp.  59-69 in               Ferguson)•  “Generations X, Y, and Z: Are They Changing America?,”

Duane F. Alwin (pp. 644-652 in Ferguson)•  “Working at Bazooms: The Intersection of Power,

Gender, and Sexuality, Meika Loe (pp. 79-94 in Ferguson)

• CULTURE, GROUPS, AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE• WEEKS 3-4•  •  “Lovely Hula Hands: Corporate Tourism and the Prostitution of

Hawaiian Culture,” Haunani-Kay Trask (pp. 113-120 in Ferguson)

• “Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison,” Craig Haney, W. Curtis Banks, and Philip G. Zimbardo (pp. 69-78 in Ferguson)

•  “Normalizing Heterosexuality: Mothers’ Assumptions, Talk, and Strategies with Young Children,” Karin A. Martin (supplemental reading)

• “Descent into Madness: The New Mexico State Prison Riot,” Mark Colvin (pp. 229-242 in Ferguson)

• THE POWER AND INFLUENCE OF THE MEDIA• WEEKS 5-6•  • “Media Images and the Social Construction of Reality,”

William Gamson et al. (supplemental reading)•  “Convergence: News Production in a Digital Age,” Eric

Klineberg (pp. 423-436 in Ferguson)• “Gender in Televised Sports: News and Highlights Shows,

1989-2009,” Michael A. Messner and Cheryl Cooky (pp. 437-453 in Ferguson)

• “Animating Youth: The Disneyfication of Children’s Culture,” Henry A. Giroux (supplemental reading)

• SELF AND IDENTITY• WEEKS  7-8•  • “Gender as Structure,” Barbara Risman (pp. 291-300 in

Ferguson• “No Way My Boys Are Going to Be Like That: Parents’

Responses to Children’s Gender Nonconformity,” Emily W. Kane (pp. 121-133 in Ferguson)

•  “Making It by Faking It: Working-Class Students in an Elite Environment,” Robert Granfield (pp. 145-157 in Ferguson)

• “Dude, You’re a Fag? Adolescent Male Homophobia,” C. J. Pascoe (pp. 315-323 in Ferguson)

• “Yearning for Lightness: Transnational Circuits in the Marketing and Consumption of Skin Lightness,” Evelyn Nakano Glenn (pp. 377-390 in Ferguson)

• SOCIAL INEQUALITIES: RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER• WEEKS 9-10•  • “What is Racial Domination,” Matthew Desmond and Mustafa

Emirbayer (pp. 338-353 in Ferguson)• “A School in the Garden,” Mitchell L. Stevens (pp. 564-577 in

Ferguson)• “Who Rules America? The Corporate Community and the

Upper Class,” G. William Domhoff (pp. 253-266 in Ferguson)•  “Nickel-and-Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America,” Barbara

Ehrenreich (pp.  278-291 in Ferguson)• “At the Slaughterhouse, Some Things Never Die,” Charlie

LeDuff (pp. 254-363 in Ferguson)

• THINKING ABOUT SOCIAL CHANGE• WEEK 11•  • “The Atrophy of Social Life,” D. Stanley Eitzen (pp. 623-

630 in Ferguson)• “The Rise of the New Global Elite,” Chrystia Freeland (pp.

413-422 in Ferguson)

• FINALS WEEK• WEEK 12•  • ***FINAL PAPER***• ***DEFENSE DUE***

Defining the Sociological Perspective

• “Sociology is the scientific study of human society and social interactions.”

• What makes sociology “scientific?”

Sociology and Common Sense

• Common sense assumptions are usually based on very

limited observation.

• Sociology seeks to:• use a broad range of carefully selected observations; and

• theoretically understand and explain those observations.

• While sociological research might confirm common

sense observation, its broader base, data and

theoretical rational provide a stronger basis for

conclusions.

Sociology and the Social Sciences

Auguste Comte (1798-1857)French Philosopher, Physician, Positivism, & Father of Sociology Worked during French Revolution & Napoleon Bonaparte rule.

• Responsible for coining the term “sociology” Father of Sociology

• Set out to develop the “science of man” that would be based on empirical (data or evidence) observation called Positivism

• Focused on two aspects of society:• Social Statics—forces which produce

order and stability• Social Dynamics—forces which

contribute to social change

Karl Marx (1818-1883) Jewish German

Philosopher, political economist, sociologist, humanist, political theorist, revolutionary Father of Communism

• Marx is the father of conflict theory• Saw human history in a continual state of conflict between two major classes:• Bourgeoisie—owners of the means of

production (capitalists)• Proletariat—the workers

• Predicted that revolution would occur producing first a socialist state, followed by a communist society (wrote: The Communist Manifesto )

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) Jewish French

Sociologist (specialist on education, crime, religion & suicide)

• Durkheim moved sociology fully into the realm of an empirical (data & evidence) science using research methods

• Most well known empirical study is called Suicide, where he looks at the social causes of suicide

Max Weber (1864-1920) Calvinist German Political

economist & Modern Sociologist (University of Berlin)

• Much of Weber’s work was a critique or clarification of Marx

• His most famous work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism directly challenged Marx’s ideas on the role of religion in society

• Weber was also interested in bureaucracies and the process of rationalization in society

The Sociological Imagination C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) American

Sociologist (USA) (Columbia University, Manhattan NY)

• C. Wright Mills coined the term “sociological imagination” to refer to “...the vivid awareness of the relationship between private experience and the wider society.”

• Wrote the controversial books titled White Collar: The American Middle Classes (1951) & The Power Elite (1956)C. Wright Mills

Men and women often feel their private lives are a series of traps

...and in this feeling, they often are quite correct

Underlying this sense of being trapped

are seemingly impersonal changes in the very structure of continent-wide societies

People do not usually define

the troubles they endure in terms of historical change and institutional contradiction

The well-being they enjoy

they do not usually associate to the big ups and downs of the societies in which they live

The history that now affects every person is world history

The very shaping of history now outpaces the ability of men to orient themselves in accordance with cherished values

People often sense

that older ways of feeling and thinking have collapsed

and that newer beginnings are ambiguous to the point of moral stasis

Is it any wonder

that ordinary people feel they cannot cope with the larger worlds with which they are so suddenly confronted?

It is not only information that people need

in this Age of Fact; information often dominates their attention and overwhelms their capacities to assimilate it

It is not only the skills of reason that they need

although their struggles to acquire these often exhaust their limited moral energy

What they need,

is a quality of mind that will help them to use information and to develop reason

to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world

and of what may be happening within themselves

This is what is called the sociological imagination

The sociological imagination

enables its possessor to understand the larger historical scene

in terms of its meaning for the inner life

and the external career of a variety of individuals

It enables people to take into account how individuals

often become falsely conscious of their social positions

The first fruit of this imagination

-and the first lesson of the social science that embodies it-

is the idea that individuals can understand their own experience and gauge their own fate

only by becoming aware of other individuals in their same circumstances

In many ways it is a terrible lesson; in many ways a magnificent one

The sociological imagination

enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society.

That is its task and its promise

According to Mills, what is the PROMISE of sociology?

The task of sociology is to…• To turn indifference (apathy) and uneasiness (anxiety)

into well-being

• But, how does sociology do that?

Perhaps the most fruitful distinction with which the sociological imagination works

is between "the personal troubles of milieu" and "the public issues of social structure."

This distinction is an essential tool of the sociological imagination

and a feature of all classic work in social science

C Wright Mills: Sociological Imagination• A quality of mind that allows us to connect:

“Personal troubles of the milieux”(biography)

with“Public issues of social structure”

(history)

• Examining these relationships gives us the knowledge to understand society, our place in it, and the ability to make changes

Troubles

occur within the character of the individual and within the range of his immediate relations with others

they have to do with his self and with those limited areas of social life of which he is directly and personally aware

Issues

have to do with matters that transcend these local environments of the individual and the range of his inner life.

They have to do with the organization of many such milieu into the institutions of an historical society as a whole

Examples – Troubles vs. Issues

Unemployment

War

Marriage

Metropolis

That, in brief, is why it is

by means of the sociological imagination

that men now hope to grasp what is going on in the world,

and to understand what is happening in themselves as minute points of the intersections of biography and history within society

HIV/AIDS Globally

Understanding and Explaining HIV/AIDS• Cultural Explanations

• Virility is strongly linked to masculinity in many cultures affected by HIV/AIDS

• Low status of women

• Social Structure Explanations• Global poverty and inequality create low immune systems• Underdevelopment limits economic opportunities

• Political Explanations• Lack of adequate health care and access to treatment• Political policies that do not address the issue

• Individual Explanations• Lack of education and poor choices

Discussion Questions• What does it mean to think sociologically? • People in America do not tend to think sociologically.

What about in China? • What are some examples of troubles? Can these be

issues?• What are some examples of issues? Can these be

troubles?

Social Problems…