sociology
the study of social life, social change, and the social causes and consequences of human behavior
What are the five sociological assumptions about the world?
1. Humans are social by nature.
2. We live most of our lives in groups, seeking interactions. Beliefs and behavior stem from group life.
3. Group changes you but you also change group. (2 way process)
4. Groups display patterns and share expectations/comm
Durkheim on social facts (pehph)
- Rely on existence of people
- May be emergent
- Hidden until experience constraint or coercion
- preestablished harmony
Social fact
any way of acting, whether fixed or not, capable of exerting an external constraint on an individual
Common sense and sociology
Sociologists take common sense and put it under empirical testing and develop theories to explain under which conditions common sense occurs
Manifest function
intended/obvious function of an item
Latent function
underlying function of an item. Hidden until resistance.
Origins of sociology
1. Scientific Revolution (~1550): conclusions about the world should be based on scientific evidence, not speculation,
2. Democratic Revolution (~1750): people are responsible for organizing society and solving social problems.
3. Industrial Revolution (~
social systems
any interdependent set of cultural and structural elements that can be thought of as a unit
Components of social system
Social structure: Framework defined by patterns of social arrangements
Social processes: human social actions that propel social system
Environment: outside forces influencing the social unit
Example of components of social system
1. social structure: family
2. social processes: child listening to parents, individual responsibilities
3. environment: how other families act, society living in
sociological imagination
the ability to see link between personal troubles and public issues & history and biography
Practical significances of social imagination
greater self awareness, organizes order from chaos, provide more holistic understanding of social life and world, helps evaluate and understand problems systematically and objectively, reveals complexity of social life
Divisions in sociology
1. topics of study
2. levels of analysis
3. theoretical analysis
Divisions in sociology: levels of analysis
micro, meso, macro levels
Divisions in sociology: theoretical analysis
functionalism, conflict theory, symbolic interactions
divisions in sociology: Functionalist perspective
- Macro-level
- Values (good vs bad)
- Human behavior governed by social structure.
- Examines stability and instability in structures
- Everything happens for a reason, someone's profiting.
- Social equilibrium & shared values will solve social problems
Divisions in sociology: Conflict Theorist perspective
- Macro-level
- Inequality
- How priviledged seek to maintain advantages and subordinated seek to gain/increase advantages.
Divisions in sociology: Symbolic Interactionist perspective
- Micro-level
- Meanings
- Social life is possible because we attach meanings to things
- People create their own social circumstances, not just react to them
- Social constructionism
- To understand behavior, we must emphatically understand motives and m