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