5381334 Sociology Theory Methods by Fulcher Chapter 1

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Theory andMethods

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Why study sociology? 6

Understanding our world 6

Understanding our place in the world 6

Understanding ourselves 7

Freeing ourselves 7

Applying sociology 8

Careers in sociology 9

What is society? 10

A complex of institutions 10

Levels of society 11

Inequality and domination 12

Structure and culture 13

Is sociology a science? 14

What is a science? 14

Is sociology a natural science? 15

Is sociology a science at all? 16

Summary points 16

Key concepts 17

Further reading 17

Web links 17

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What is sociology?

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Zygmunt BaumanOne could say that the main service the art of thinkingsociologically may render to each and every one of us isto make us more sensitive; it may sharpen up our senses,open our eyes wider so that we can explore human con-

ditions which thus far had remained all but invisible.Once we understand better how the apparently natural,inevitable, immutable, eternal aspects of our lives havebeen brought into being through the exercise of humanpower and human resources, we will nd it hard to ac-cept once more that they are immune and impenetrableto human actionour own action included. Sociologicalthinking is, one might say, a power in its own right,an anti-xating power. It renders exible again theworld hitherto oppressive in its apparent xity; it showsit as a world which could be different from what it

is now. It can be argued that the art of sociologicalthinking tends to widen the scope, the daring and thepractical effectiveness of your and my freedom. Oncethe art has been learned and mastered, the individualmay well become just a bit less manipulable, moreresilient to oppression and regulation from outside,more likely to resist being xed by forces that claim tobe irresistible.

Source: Bauman, Z. (1990) Thinking Sociologically (Oxford: BasilBlackwell), p. 16.

Zygmunt Bauman (19XX) has been Professor of Sociology at the Universities of Leeds and Warsaw.

Among his many reections on sociological theory andcontemporary society are Modernity and the Holocaust (Cambridge: Polity), 1989; Globalization: The HumanConsequences (Cambridge: Polity), 1998; Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity), 2000. A second editionof Thinking Sociologically (written with Tim May) waspublished in 2001.

Steve Bruce To summarize, whatever reservations we may haveabout how closely actual scientists conform to the highstandards set in their programmatic statements about what they and why it works, we need not doubt that the

natural sciences offer the best available template foracquiring knowledge about the material world. Criticalreasoning, honest and diligent accumulation of evid-ence, subjecting ideas to test for internal consistency and for t with the best available evidence, seeking evid-ence that refutes rather than supports an argument,engaging in open exchanges of ideas and data uncon-strained by ideological commitments: all of those canbe protably adopted by the social sciences. However,we need to appreciate the differences between thesubject matter of the natural and the human sciences.

People think. They act as they do, not because they arebound to follow unvarying rules but because they havebeliefs, values, interests, and intentions. That simplefact means that, while some forms of sociological re-search look rather like the work of chemists or physicists,for the sociologist there is always a further step to take.Our notion of explanation does not stop at identifyingregular patterns in social action. It requires that weunderstand.

Source: Bruce, S. (1999), Sociology: A Very Short Introduction(Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp . 1819.

Steve Bruce (19XX) has been Professor of Sociology at the University of Aberdeen since 1991. He is theauthor of The Edge of the Union: The Ulster Loyalist Political Vision(Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1994;Religion in Modern Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 1995; Choice and Religion: a Critique of Rational Choice Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press); andmany other publications in the sociology of religion.

4 1: What is sociology?

We introduce you to sociology in this chapter. We begin by explaining why we think that you should study sociology, and by telling you what you can get out of it and what you canuse it for. We go on to tackle two fundamental questions. Sociologists study society but

what do we mean by this term? How do sociologists study societyis sociology a science?

Four sociologists reect on their subject

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Why study sociology?

Sociology enables us to understand the world we livein but also to understand ourselves, for we are theproducts of that world. This understanding can helpus to gain more control over our lives but it can alsobe put to more practical uses as well.

Understanding our worldWe live in a world of extraordinary choice. Our choiceof food to eat, holiday destinations to visit, and tele-vision channels to watch seems almost limitless. We

can in many ways choose our own identity, by con-structing a lifestyle that suits us or creating a newpersona in a virtual community. We can choose thebody shape that we want and through a combina-tion of diet, exercise, and cosmetic surgery at leasttry to change our body accordingly. The provision of choice, whether in education or health-care, has alsobecome one of the main priorities of governmentpolicy.

Although we have a strong sense of choice, we are,none the less, subject to social pressures that in manyways seem to make these choices for us. Our valuesand our opportunities are shaped by the society in

which we grow up and our position in this society.We are under pressure to conform to other peoplesideas of how we should look and how we should live.While we may think that we choose certain productsor decide to hold certain views, we are subject toextensive manipulation by advertisers, media moguls,and spin doctors. Many people anyway feel that workpressures and shortage of time leave them with verylittle opportunity to do anything but get up in themorning, work all day, and do the housework or lookafter the children when they get home at night.

We also live in a world where the ability to choosevaries enormously between people. In our own soci-

ety the poor, the unemployed, the single parent, therefugee, all have less choice than others. In mostAfrican, Asian, or Latin American countries, wherethere is far more poverty and far fewer opportunitiesto escape it, many people struggle to just survive fromday to day. Choice is, therefore, unequally distrib-uted and has become steadily more so, as inequalityhas increasednot only within our own society butalso in the world as a whole, for the gap between richand poor countries has been widening as well.

How are we to understand and explain this strangeworld we live in, a world that gives us choice but also

takes it away, that provides some with enormouschoice but others with very little, that makes us thinkthat we have choice when we often have hardly any?It is above all sociology that has tackled these issuesand you will nd that they come up again and againin this book, when we examine the way that beliefs,values, and identities are shaped and created; oranalyse inequalities of class, gender, and ethnicity; ordiscuss the inuence of the mass media on the waythat we think and behave; or consider the conictingpressures of work demands and household obligations.

Understanding our placein the worldSociology enables us not only to understand the worldaround us but also our place within it. This is not justa matter of where we live, important as this is, but of where we are located within social structures and thechanges taking place in these structures.

Sociologists use the term social structure to refer toany relatively stable pattern of relationships betweenpeople. In our panel of four sociologists, C. WrightMills refers to the structure of society as a wholebut any social group, however big or small, froma family to a political party, has a social structure.So does any organization, such as a university, awork-place, or a hospital. There are also the widerstructures of class, gender, and ethnicity that stretchacross a whole society and, indeed, beyond it. Someorganizations, such as transnational corporations,cross national boundaries, and national societiesthemselves exist within a global structure of inter-national relationships.

By describing such structures, sociology providesus with a map of society within which we can placeourselves, so that we can begin to understand thesocial forces that act upon us. These structures are,however, constantly changing and one of the maintasks of sociology is to understand and explain socialchange and the impact that it has on people. Weexamine social structures in Part Three of this bookand you will nd that each of the chapters is cent-rally concerned with processes of social change.

Some recent changes that have in one way oranother impacted on all of us are:

Advances in communications that have made itpossible to transfer huge quantities of information

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and money instantly across the world, and enabledthe emergence of an electronic world of cyber-culture, virtual communities, and anonymousidentities.

The decentralization of cities, as superstores, hos-pitals, hotels, and leisure complexes have movedfrom the centre to the edge of the city, and thetransformation of city centres by a rapidly expand-ing night-time world of pubs and clubs wherebouncers rule.

Changes in family life, as more people havedecided to live on their own, more couples havecohabited without marriage, women have increas-ingly found employment in paid work, divorcerates have risen, and the number of single-parentfamilies has increased.

The transformation of work, with the decline of old industries and the expansion of service occupa-tions requiring emotional labour, while moreexible and less secure forms of part-time andtemporary work have spread, and more employeeshave teleworked from home.

increasing inequality, as more people have experi-enced poverty and exclusion, and the gap haswidened not only between the rich and the poorwithin societies but also between rich and poorcountries.

You will nd that we discuss all these changesand many others in this book. Each may seem to bequite distinctive in character, but they have manyprocesses in common and are interconnected invarious ways. Globalization, for example, is centrallyinvolved in almost all of them and connects oneprocess of change with another. It is sociology thathas the concepts that enable us to comprehend theseprocesses of change and grasp the connections be-tween them.

Understanding ourselvesPerhaps most fundamentally of all, sociology enablesus to understand ourselves. The way that we think,behave, and feel, indeed our very sense of identity, issocially produced. It is only through a knowledgeand understanding of the social processes that turnus into the people we are that we can truly under-stand ourselves.

Socialization is the general term that sociologistsuse for this process. We use this term, because this isa process that makes us into social beings, that turnsan individual into a member of society. It begins with

a childs upbringing in the family and continuesthrough education but does not stop there, for it con-tinues throughout our life. Every time that we join anew group, perhaps of rst-years at university or col-leagues at work, a process of socialization goes on.Each time that we enter a new stage in life, we learnto play certain roles, the role of a parent, the role of agrandparent, and so on. Socialization is so funda-mental to the understanding of the workings of asociety that we discuss it at some length in Chapter 4.

Part Two of this book is primarily concerned withidentities. Our sense of personal identity seems sostrong and so individual that we think it is producedby some process going on mysteriously inside usthat makes us who we really are. Sociologists argue,however, that identities are socially constructed.

Even such basic features of our identity as sex, race,or age are socially not biologically constructed. Thecategories that we place ourselves in, such as menor women, blacks or whites, young or old,healthy or sick, refer to our physical characteristicsbut they are, none the less, social categories thatreect certain ways of thinking about people thatvary between societies. We learn these categoriesthrough socialization and then see ourselves as hav-ing the characteristics that these categories specify.

Freeing ourselvesA knowledge of the social structures that constrainus, and the social processes that give us identities,does not, however, condemn us to passivity. Indeed,the reverse is the case, for by making us aware of theforces acting upon us, sociology also enables us to seethem for what they are, resist them if we wish to, and,to some extent, free ourselves from them.

This point is made well by two of the sociologists inour panel of four (see p. XXX). Berger uses the meta-phor of the puppet theatre to represent social reality.He suggests that, as in a puppet theatre, peopleact out certain parts that are prescribed for them,

and are pulled this way and that by the invisiblestrings of society. Through sociology, they can,however, see the strings that pull them and the socialmachinery that operates the strings. Once they dothis they are no longer puppets and have taken therst step towards freedom.

Bauman similarly points out that through sociologywe can become aware of, and can then explore, thepreviously invisible social context of our lives. Thismeans that we discover that much that appeared tobe beyond human control, that seemed natural orinevitable, is actually the result of human actions. To


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structures that have generated these problems andbring about social reform.

Careers in sociology What can you do with sociology? How can sociologyhelp you in nding a career?

One possible career is to become a professionalsociologist, carrying out sociological research andcommunicating its results. This might be in aneducational institution but not necessarily, as thereare many other organizations, such as specializedresearch institutes and think tanks, that employ pro-fessional sociologists. Sociology is an exceptionallyrewarding area in which to do research. It is an

enormously diverse and dynamic eld, with frontiersopening up in all directions, as our Frontiers Boxesand the Studies at the end of each of the Part Two andPart Three chapters will show. The range of methodsinvolved, which stretch from large-scale quantitativesurveys to intensive observational studies of thesocial life of small groups, provides scope for manydifferent skills and inclinations. Research is, further-more, not just a matter of acquiring knowledge, butalso of developing the ideas, concepts, and methodsof sociology itself.

As a subject to teach, it has much to offer, as it dealsall the time with topics and issues that are central to

the lives of those being taught. As you teach sociologyyou can draw on the experiences of those you areteaching, using their daily lives to illustrate sociolo-gical theories and concepts, while using sociology toprovide them with a greater understanding of theirsituation in the world, the forces acting upon them,and the sources of their own beliefs and identities.Those who teach in schools and colleges can also playtheir part in developing the subject by contributingarticles to such publications as the Sociology Review orwriting pieces for sociology web sites.

Most sociology graduates will probably not, how-ever, go into teaching or research careers. What other

things can sociologists do? Sociology is not a voca-tional subject, in the sense of providing a trainingfor a specic occupation. It is, however, relevant to avery wide range of occupations, a wider range thanyou probably realize, as the box on careers shows.Indeed, this broad range of occupational destinationsmakes sociology a good choice for those who havenot decided what career they wish to pursue orsimply want to keep their options open. You can besure that a subject that gives you a greater understand-ing of social situations, social interaction, and humanbehaviour in general, will provide you with insights

that will come in useful whoever employs you andwhatever you do.

The skills and knowledge of the sociologist alsobecome increasingly relevant as information aboutpeople becomes more and more central to the func-tioning of the society we live in. Most expandingoccupations, in such areas as marketing, publicrelations, opinion formation, the media, human re-source management, education, research, and socialpolicy, depend on the collection, analysis, and com-munication of information about people, and this is,after all, what sociology is about.


BRIEFING

Careers for sociologists The traditional occupation for Sociology graduates hasbeen social work or some other form of public sector welfarework, such as the probation service. However, in practicesociology graduates go into a much wider range of jobs.In industry, for instance, human resource management (or personnel as it used to be called) is one applicationclose to welfare but, additionally, aspects of marketingdraw upon sociological skills. Virtually all sociology courses include methods of social research and thesecan have an enlightening effect upon market research.

Some of the large retail rms, from Laura Ashley through

Marks and Spencer to Tesco, recognize that their chief concern is with people and consequently have takensociology graduates into their management trainingschemes. In fact the range has tended to broaden in boththe public and private sectors. For example, in recent returns graduate entry into the police force is a noticeableaddition to the former and journalism to the latter.

Many sociology graduates go into teaching. Thisembraces school teaching, further education, and theoption to stay in higher education. Prospective schoolteachers and teachers in further education go on aftergraduation to take a postgraduate certicate ineducation (PGCE) . . . If you plan to study for a PGCE, you

will need to ensure that the subjects you study as part of your degree will allow you entry to a PGCE course, asthere are some restrictions. Talk to the Admissions Tutorof the course for more advice.

Students who achieve the best results during theirundergraduate courses may get the chance to go on topostgraduate research for a higher degree with the aimof making a career in higher education. . . . However,resources for this are scarce and therefore competitionis erce.

Source: British Sociological Association (2002), see Web Links.

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We can all agree that sociologists study society butwhat do we mean by this term? It is used in many dif-ferent ways in sociology but most commonly to referto a national unit, though some would argue that wenow live not in distinct national societies but a globalsociety. It is not really possible to give a short denitionof something as complex as a society and the easiestway to get a sense of what it means is to examine itsmain aspects in turn. These are also the main lines of enquiry along which sociology has developed.

A complex of institutionsInstitutions are the established practices that regu-late the various activities that make up social life.Examples of institutions are marriages, markets, educa-tional curricula, religious rituals, and governments,which in their different ways all give order to differ-ent aspects of the way that we live. In contemporarysocieties, these institutions, and also the organiza-tions associated with them, are highly specialized.Thus, the educational, economic, political, military,and religious activities of society each have specializedinstitutions and organizations.

We speak of a complex of institutions becausethese specialized institutions are closely interrelatedwith each other. Consider, for example, educationalinstitutions and their organizations. In Britain,public-sector schools, colleges, and universities aredependent on political institutions for their funding.It is ultimately the government that decides how muchmoney to distribute to them. Governments are them-selves dependent on the economy. The amount of money that the government has to spend on educa-tion depends on how much it can raise in taxes.While this is partly a political question, it also dependson the state of the economy. This itself depends,

however, on education, for it is education that sup-plies the economy with skilled labour. This has beenan important issue in Britain since the 1970s, for ithas been argued that education has not been givingpeople the skills that the economy needs, an issuethat we take up in Chapter 9, pp. XXXXXX.

These interrelationships mean that institutionsshould not be studied in isolation from each other.Sociologists cannot, of course, study everything simul-taneously and they tend to specialize in the study of particular areas, such as the family or religion or themedia. Part Three of this book is divided into chap-

ters that specialize in distinct areas of this sort. Toachieve a complete understanding of what is goingon in any one of these areas, you must always, how-ever, bear in mind its links with others. In this bookwe have indicated what we see as the more importantlinks through cross-references and hint boxes.

It is one of the distinctive features of sociology thatit is concerned with whole societies. As C. WrightMills put it, sociologists should ask: What is thestructure of this particular society as a whole?Sociology is, indeed, the only subject that seessocieties as wholes in this way. This distinctiveperspective means that it overlaps with many other

elds of specialized enquiry. Economics and politics,


Education and politics.

What is society?

Education Government

Economy

S k i l l s T a x e s

Funds

Figure 1.1

Institutional interdependence

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we are making, here, however, is that the nationallevel is one level of society but only one level.

Most people live in family or household units con-sisting of a small number of closely related people.They have a sense of obligation to each other whichis greater than that to those outside the group, andthey see themselves as members of a family. Theyoften speak of themselves as living in a family. Inthinly populated rural areas where people practise aself-su b cient form of agriculture one family mayhave very little contact with another and a personssociety may consist almost entirely of other membersof the immediate family group. This is a rare situ-ation, however, particularly nowadays, and the vastmajority of people are involved on a daily basis withmuch larger social units.

One such unit is the community . Two centuriesor so ago most people lived in small, relatively self-su b cient and self-contained communities based onthe rural village or the small town, where everyoneknew everyone else. Industrialization and urbaniza-tion disrupted communities of this sort and broughtlarge numbers of people who did not know each othertogether. As we show in Chapter 13, pp. XXXXX, newkinds of community have, however, established them-selves within cities. Many people still see themselvesas members of communities of one kind or another.

Whether or not people feel that they are membersof a community, they are inevitably members of a

larger social unit, the nation state , which duringthe nineteenth and twentieth centuries becamesteadily more important in peoples lives. With the

What is society? 11

Can family be a society.

for example, are subjects in their own right, whichexplore in detail the workings of the areas concernedand the issues specic to them. Economic and polit-ical institutions are, however, crucial to the function-ing of any society and there is also, therefore, asociology of economic life and a sociology of politics.These particularly address the relationships betweenthese areas and the wider society.

Sociologys concern with whole societies and allactivities that occur within them means that any as-pect of social life can become a eld within sociology.Indeed, one of the exciting and dynamic things aboutsociology is the way that new specialities are con-stantly opening up within it as sociologists begin toexplore new areas of activity that have not been studiedbefore or have newly emerged through social change.

Examples of new elds are the sociology of sport, thesociology of tourism, and the sociology of the body.

Levels of society In discussing society as a complex of institutionswe have been operating at one particular level, thenational level, of society. People do commonly seethemselves as members of national societies. If some-one asks you which society you belong to, you willprobably reply that you live in, say, British or Americanor Indian society. If you live in Britain, you might of

course prefer to say that you live in Scottish or Welshsociety, for nationality is a contentious matter, whichwe discuss in Chapter 14, pp. XXXXX. The point that

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development of the nation state, national institutionsemerged. At its centre is the state apparatus itself, butthere are also national educational systems, nationaleconomic institutions, national health services, na-tional armies, and national churches, to name someof the more obvious examples. As members of anation state, people have the rights and responsibil-ities of citizens of that state, and a sense of nationalidentity. We examine the development of nationsand nation states in Chapter 14, pp. XXXXX.

Nation states are not, however, self-su b cient, forthey are interlinked with each other and dependent

on each other in complex ways. These links developedparticularly strongly with industrialization, whichmade national economies highly dependent on oneanother through an international division of labour.The industrial societies specialized in producingmanufactured goods for the world as a whole, whileother parts of the world specialized in producingfood for the workers, and raw materials for the factor-ies, of the industrial societies.

National societies have become ever more integ-rated with each other through a process known asglobalization , which we discuss at length in Chap-ter 14. The worldthe globehas become a smaller

place. Improvements in communication mean thatone can travel to most places in the world within aday or so, while information can be transmitted in-stantly to any part of it. Nowadays many companiesare global corporations operating in large numbers of countries on every continent. There are also globalpolitical organizations, such as the United Nations,and global movements such as Greenpeace. As well asbeing members of national societies, people are alsomembers of a global society. Indeed, the term theglobal village is sometimes used to express the ideathat people have become closely linked with eachother across the globe.

As society has developed, social units have becomesteadily larger in their scale. Communities became partof national societies and national societies have be-come part of a global society. At one time or another ithas been argued that the family, the community, andthe nation went into decline as social units grew insize. Smaller-scale units have, however, not so muchdisappeared as changed, as society has become multi-level in character. There are many important issueshere for sociologists as they examine the relationshipsbetween the overlapping units that make up society.

Inequality and dominationIn our discussion of society as a complex of insti-

tutions, we emphasized the way in which eachorganized a particular activity for society as a whole.Societies are also, however, divided by inequality.Some groups benet more from these activities thanothers and seek to maintain or increase their advant-ages. Structures of inequality and domination maystretch right across a society, indeed across the worldas a whole, as a dominant group tries to gain controlof all areas of activity and secure benets in all as-pects of life. We particularly address the issues raisedby inequality in Chapters 16 and 17, but you will ndthem cropping up throughout the book.

There are various dimensions of inequality within

national societies. There are class inequalities between,say, aristocracies and commoners or employers andworkers. There are ethnic inequalities between, say,whites, Asians, and African-Caribbeans. There are gen-der inequalities between men and women. In somesocieties, religion or nationality have become majorlines of division. There are also inequalities betweennational societies, for increasing global integrationhas not resulted in greater international equality, aswe show in Chapter 14.

The study of inequality and its consequencesbrings up a number of important issues that havebeen much discussed in sociology. These can be

grouped under three headings:


Upper class

Middle class

Lower class

Socialmobility

International and global organizations

Nation state Nation state

Community Community

Family Family

Figure 1.2

Levels of society

Figure 1.3

Social stratication by class

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social stratication;

social control;

social conict.

Social stratication. Social stratication is con-cerned with the way in which a structure of layers,or strata, emerge within society. Typically there is atop layer of the rich and powerful, a bottom layer of the poor and powerless, and various other layers inbetween. Important questions that are raised are thenumber of layers that exist in a society, where theboundaries between them should be drawn, the easewith which people can move between them (socialmobility), and the way in which the layers persist andchange from one generation to the next.

Social control . This raises the question of how

inequality is maintained. How do the upper layerscontrol those below them and maintain their variousadvantages? One way is through control of the useof forcethat is, control of the military and policeforces of a society. Sociologists generally emphasize,however, that there are more subtle means of controlthat operate by inuencing beliefs and attitudes.Thus, it has been variously argued that people arecontrolled through education, religion, the massmedia, or social policy, and we discuss these argu-ments in the chapters on these areas.

Social conict . Here the issue is whether and underwhat conditions inequality generates conict. Do the

mechanisms of social control break down? Do thosein the lower layers organize themselves to improvetheir situation and challenge the domination of society by those with wealth and power? Underwhat conditions, for example, can workers organizethemselves collectively to demand higher wages andchallenge the power of the employer? Under whatconditions do women organize themselves throughfeminist movements to challenge male domination?

The study of inequality is linked to the study of institutions and their interrelationships, for therich and powerful largely maintain their wealth andpower by controlling the institutions of society.

Similarly, those who challenge their position have tocontest their control of these institutions. Thus, thestudy of this aspect of society is closely related to theissues we raised in our discussion of institutions.

Structure and cultureSociologists distinguish between the social structureof a society and its culture . As we explained earlier(see p. XXX), by social structure they generally meana relatively stable pattern of relationships betweensocial groups or organizations. By culture sociologists

mean the beliefs of the society and their symbolicrepresentation through its creative activities. A sym-bol is simply a representation, such as a word or agesture or an image, which communicates an idea orfeeling. Culture can best be discussed by distinguish-ing between beliefs, which are the content of theculture, and creative activities, which express thiscontent in actions or objects.

Beliefs are concerned with both ideas about theway things are and ideas about how they ought to be.Ideas about how things are include beliefs about thenature of thingsthe physical world, human nature,and the character of society. Ideas about how thingsought to be are embodied in values and norms:

Values specify what people ought to do. Thus, thebelief that people should accumulate wealth or

the belief that they should live in harmony withthe natural environment are both values, thoughrather different ones.

Norms are rules of behaviour that regulate howpeople behave. A typical norm, for example, is therule that people should not accumulate wealth bystealing from each other. Such norms are oftenembodied in laws.

Beliefs about the way that the world is and theway that it ought to be are commonly linked togetherby religion and politics. Thus, Christianity containsideas about Gods creation of the world and the belief

that human beings are naturally sinful. Christianityalso emphasizes certain values, such as love and char-ity, and provides a set of norms, such as the prohibi-tion of sexual behaviour outside marriage. Politicalbeliefs, such as socialism or liberalism, similarly linktogether ideas about the nature of society and dis-tinctive visions of what a society should be like.

Culture also takes the form of creative activities thatexpress ideas and feelings. The term culture is oftenused to refer to the high culture of a society, its collec-tions of paintings, its opera houses, and great works of literature. But there is also its popular culture, and thishas become an area of growing interest in sociology,

which we discuss in Chapter 10. Cinema, popularmusic, magazines, and soap operas are part of our cul-ture in this sense. Activities as various as gardening,craftwork, dressing, cooking, and talking are all creat-ive activities that can be considered part of culture.

Indeed, the term culture is often used in a verybroad way to refer to the general customs and way of life of a society or a group within it, as in references toworking-class culture or Asian culture. Culture in thissense includes the way that people meet and greeteach other, the way they behave towards each otherat work and at leisure, their sporting and religiousactivities, and so on. All social activity has a cultural

What is society? 13

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Is sociology a science?

In the previous section we discussed what sociolo-

gists mean by society. Here we take up issues raisedby the way in which they study it. The question of whether sociology should be considered a sciencehas been hotly debated both inside and outside thesubject. It is an interesting and important questionthat enables us to explore the nature of the subject,its distinctiveness, and its relationships with othersubjects. Before discussing it, we must, however, rstconsider what is meant by science.

What is a science?

It is rst very important to clear away certain miscon-ceptions about science. It is popularly associated withtwo things, the use of the experimental method andthe collection of facts. Many scientists certainly docarry out experiments and collect facts but science in-volves considerably more than this.

The experiment is an important and powerfulmethod but not the only one used by science. It is apowerful method because it enables the isolation andmeasurement of the effect of one variable. Thus, forexample, the effect of an antibiotic can be establishedby preparing two identical dishes of bacteria, addingthe antibiotic to one only, and then comparing the

results after a suitable period of time. There are, how-ever, various elds of investigation, commonly regardedas sciences, that cannot make much use of the experi-mental method. Astronomy, geology, and meteorologyare obvious examples. They have to rely largely onother kinds of observational method for the collec-tion of data. Important as the laboratory experimentundoubtedly is to the natural sciences, the use of thismethod is not a dening characteristic of science.

If experimental methods are not the only methodused by scientists, surely, you might say, there can beno doubt that sciences are concerned with the collec-

aspect, for all social actions express peoples ideas andfeelings, and therefore communicate their culture.

The question then arises of the relationship betweenstructure and culture, an issue that has been much dis-cussed in sociology. One example of this is the rela-tionship between structures of inequality and culture.As we pointed out above, one way in which those atthe top of society dominate those at the bottom is

tion of facts by one means or another. The rst prob-

lem this raises is that facts are not simply collected.Scientists do not just look around to see what factsthey can discover, for scientic enquiry is directed bythe theoretical concerns of scientists. Scientic ideaslie behind the design of experiments or the search fordata of a particular kind. The dark matter of the uni-verse was not exactly visible, by its very nature, andastronomers discovered it not because they cameacross it but because the currently dominant theoryof the origins of the universe suggested that there hadto be far more matter in the universe than could beaccounted for by its visible material.

Secondly, the conventional idea of a fact is of

something existing out there waiting to be dis-covered. What actually happens is that scientists makeobservations, which then have to be interpreted andmade sense of before they can become facts. Inter-pretation always involves explanatory ideas and thisreturns us again to the importance of theories. Theexistence of black holes is now an accepted fact inastronomy. This fact is certainly based on observa-tions of the behaviour of stars but it depends alsoupon a theory of what happens when matter be-comes so highly concentrated that nothing canescape its gravitational pull. Without this theory, wecould not conceive of black holes.

Science is both an empirical and a theoretical enter-prise. In saying that it is empirical we mean that it isbased on observations. The word empirical is derivedfrom the Greek word for experience and is commonlyused to refer to observational work that provides uswith experience of the world. In saying that science istheoretical we mean that it also involves systematicthought about the world. A theory is a logically con-nected set of ideas. Theories guide empirical workand are used to interpret and explain its observations,which may or may not t the existing theory. If theydo not t it, the theory needs at least to be revised

through their control of education, religion, and themass media. This enables them to inuence peoplesbeliefs and shape the way that they think and behave.Culture can, therefore, reinforce the existing struc-ture of society, though subordinate groups can alsochallenge this structure by developing alternativeideas and beliefs, as shown, for example, by the growthof oppositional socialist and feminist cultures.


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and may have to be abandoned. Science advancesthrough the constant interplay of theoretical andempirical work.

While it is important to be clear about the logic of scientic activity, it is also important to bear in mindthe scientic spirit. By this we mean the set of idealswhich motivate and guide scientic work. Science isboth rational and critical . It is rational in that it rejectsexplanations of the world that are based on religiousbeliefs or mysterious forces, rather than reasonedthought. It is critical, as it questions received ideasand accepted beliefs. It is concerned with establish-ing the truth about how the world is and how thingsactually work, rather than how they ought to be orhow they are supposed to be.

This does not mean that scientists lack values and

beliefs. Like anyone else, they hold values and be-liefs, which may well inuence what they do. Forexample, scientists concerned about the state of thenatural environment might well carry out researchinto global warming. Values and beliefs should not,however, inuence the scientists investigation orinterpretation of observations. Thus, however con-cerned such a scientist might be about pollution, if the observations did not support the theory of globalwarming, the scientist would be expected to say so.

We have in some ways presented an idealized pictureof science. Most scientic enquiry is driven by therequirements of industry or government rather than

the pursuit of knowledge. Scientists sometimes sup-press results that do not t their theories or that mightdamage their careers, because they conict with theiremployers interest in a particular policy or product.Research results are faked by some researchers whoare more concerned to achieve publications and ad-vance their careers than advance knowledge. At theheart of science there is, none the less, an ideal of dis-interested enquiry into the nature of things and it isagainst this ideal that the work of scientists is judged.

Is sociology a natural science?The rst sciences to develop were the natural sciencesand they therefore became the model for scienticactivity. Some sociologists adopted this model andtried to develop a natural science of human beha-viour. Most contemporary sociologists would, how-ever, argue that society cannot be studied in the waythat the natural world is studied. Social behaviouris in important respects quite different from naturalbehaviour.

Human behaviour is meaningful behaviour, forwhatever human beings do means something to

them. It is a characteristic of human beings that theyact in the context of beliefs and purposes that givetheir actions meaning and shape the way that theybehave. If sociologists are to understand and explainhuman behaviour, they have to take account of themeanings that people give to their actions.

Thus, no universal statements can be made abouthuman behaviour, for the same behaviour meansdifferent things in different societies. Let us take eat-ing practices as a simple example. The eating of roastbeef has been traditional in England and regarded asone of the distinctive features of English life. In India,however, cows are considered sacred and may not bekilled, let alone eaten. On the other hand, while theeating of dogs in the Far East is commonplace, it isquite abhorrent to most British people. Behaviour

considered quite normal in one society is quite unac-ceptable in another. This means that no general state-ments can be made about human eating behaviour inthe way that they can about the eating behaviour of animals.

Human behaviour is also different because peoplethink about what they are doing. They are at leastpartly aware of the forces acting upon them andcan resist these forces and act differently. Thus, whilethe eating of snails and frogs legs is not a normalfeature of the British diet and is generally viewed inBritain with some disgust, some British people mayconsider that there is no good reason for rejecting

these foods. They may decide that it must be possibleto enjoy them, if the French eat them with suchrelish, and may then try them out. Similarly veget-arians may reject traditional British beef-eating prac-tices. Behaviour is not entirely culture bound becauseindividuals can break out from their culture and,indeed, change their culture.

None the less, it clearly remains the case that thereare broad differences of culture between, say, Britishpeople and French people that result in different eat-ing habits. Furthermore, those who do break awayfrom established patterns will themselves be distinct-ive in certain ways. They may, for example, be edu-

cated to a higher level. Thus, we are not arguing thatwhat people do is a matter simply of choice but ratherthat there is a cultural patterning of social behaviourthat makes it more complex than natural behaviour.

Weber particularly emphasized the importance tosociological explanation of understanding the meaning of human action. See Chapter 2, pp. XXXXX.

The cultural content of social behaviour means thatit cannot just be observed, it has to be understood.

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Key concepts

community culture family globalization household

institutions nation state norms personal identity science

the structure of society, and in what leads tocertain kinds of behaviour being dened as aproblem.

We also suggested that sociology can open the wayto a wide range of careers.

We then moved on to consider what sociologistsmean by society, by examining the main features of societies:

Societies consist of a complex of interdependentinstitutions.

Societies are, however, organized at a number of different levels, from the family, through the com-munity and the nation state, to the global level.

Societies also consist of structures of inequality anddomination.

There is a cultural dimension to society, consistingof peoples beliefs and their symbolic representa-tion in actions and objects.

Lastly, we discussed whether sociology should beconsidered a science:

Science involves systematic observation andthe development of theories to explainobservations.

Sociology is not a natural science because socialbehaviour is different from natural behaviour.

The explanation of social behaviour requires theunderstanding of the meaning of actions.

Sociology is, none the less, a social science that isbased on systematic observational methods andthe construction of explicit theories.

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social stratication social structure socialization society values

The following, which we have quoted in our panel on p. XXX, all provide interesting andperceptive discussions of the nature of sociology:Bauman, Z., and May, T. (2001), Thinking Sociologically , (2nd edn.), (Oxford: Basil Blackwell).Berger, P. (1963), Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective(Harmondsworth: Penguin).Bruce, S. (1999), Sociology: A Very Short Introduction(Oxford: Oxford University Press).Mills, C. W. (1959),The Sociological Imagination(New York: Oxford University Press).

Visit our own web site, with lots of interesting additional material and links for each chapter, at http://www.oup.co.uk/best.textbooks/sociology/fulcher/

The web site of the British Sociological Association, where you can nd general information about the subject, including another answer to the question What is sociology?, and advice about careeropportunities for sociologists, is at

http://www.britsoc.org.uk/about/oppsociol.htm

For a comprehensive but carefully selected list of sociology web links, with very helpful descriptionsof what can be found at each one, visit

http://www.sosig.ac.uk /sociology

Further reading

Web links W

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5381334 Sociology Theory Methods by Fulcher Chapter 1

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