Sociology 9th Edition

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Sociology 9th Edition

• Rodney StarkUniversity of Washington

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Chapter 1

• Groups and Relationships A Sociological Sampler

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Chapter Outline

• Science Theory and Research
• The Discovery of Social Facts
• The Sociological Imagination
• Sociology and the Social Sciences
• Units of Analysis
• Micro- and Macrosociology
• A Global Perspective

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Chapter Outline

• Scientific Concepts
• Groups The Sociological Subject
• Solidarity and Conflict The Sociological
  Questions
• Analyzing Social Networks
• Studying Self-Aware Subjects
• The Social Scientific.c Process
• Free Will and Social Science

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Science Theory and Research

• Science is a method for describing and explaining
  why and how things work
• The scientific method consists of two components
  theory and research.

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Theory

• Abstract statement that explains why and how
  certain things happen and why they are as they
  are.
• Scientific theories must make definite
  predictions and prohibitions.

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Research

• Making appropriate empirical observations or
  measurements.
• Test theories or gain knowledge about some
  portion of reality so it becomes possible to
  theorize about it.

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Holmans Law of Inequality

• Friendships tend to be concentrated among people
  of the same rank.
• Exceptions to the rule members with close ties
  to those of another rank, tend to lack ties to
  others of their own rank.

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The Discovery Of Social Facts

• In 1825, the French Ministry of Justice began to
  collect criminal justice statistics.
• Soon, they began collecting data on activities
  such as suicide, illegitimate births and military
  desertion.
• The data was published, as the General Account of
  the Administration of Criminal Justice in France,
  with little or no analysis.

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André Michel Guerry

• Became fascinated with the statistics and devoted
  himself to interpreting them.
• In 1831, he published his findings, attempting to
  see if education influenced crime rates.
• In 1833, he published his masterpiece, Essai sur
  la statistique morale de la France (Essay the
  Moral Statistics of France) and launched
  sociology.

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Guerrys Research Stability and Variation

• Rates were stable from year to year
• In any French city or department, almost exactly
  the same number of people committed suicide,
  stole, or gave birth out of wedlock.
• Rates varied from one place to another
• The number of suicides per 100,000 population
  varied from 34.7 in the Department of the Seine
  to fewer than 1 per 100,000 in Aveyron.
• These patterns forced Guerry to reassess the
  primary causes of human behavior

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Female and of Persons 1625 Accused of Theft
in France
female age 1625
1826 21 37
1827 21 35
1828 22 38
1829 23 37
1830 22 37
Average 22 37
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Morsellis Research Number of Suicides per
100,000 Population
England Sweden
18301840 6.3 6.8
18451855 6.2 6.9
18561860 6.5 6.4
18611865 6.6 7.6
18661870 6.7 8.5
Paris London
18271830 34.7
18611870 35.7 8.1
18721876 42.6 8.6
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Durkheim and Suicide

• In, 1897 Frenchman, Émile Durkheim, published
  Suicide.
• Stressed that high suicide rates reflect
  weaknesses in the relationships among members of
  a society, not in the character or personality of
  the individual.

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The Sociological Imagination

• Seeing the link between incidents in the lives of
  individuals and large social forces.
• Data on moral statistics forced early social
  scientists to develop sociological imaginations.

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Sociology and the Social Sciences

• Sociology is the scientific study of the patterns
  and processes of human social relations.
• All social sciences have the same subject matter
  human behavior.
• Social Scientists psychologists, economists,
  anthropologists, criminologists, political
  scientists, many historians, and sociologists.

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Why Modern Sociology Stresses a Global Perspective

• To provide a meaningful basis of comparison.
• Much of what goes on in one society is influenced
  by other societies.
• Science seeks general theories. A theory must
  hold everywhere that it applies.

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Fundamental Sociological Questions

• What binds people together?
• What separates us?
• What causes social solidarity and what causes
  social conflict?

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The Social Scientific Process 8 Steps

1. Wonder. Science always begins with someone
   wondering why.
2. Conceptualize. Scientists must be precise about
   what it is they are wondering about.
3. Theorize. To explain something, we must say how
   and why a set of concepts are related.
4. Operationalize. Identify indicators of each
   concept to make a theory testable.

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The Social Scientific Process 8 Steps

1. Hypothesize. Formulate predictions about what
   will be observed in the connections among the
   indicators of the concepts.
2. Observe. Use the appropriate research design to
   gather observations.
3. Analyze. Compare what we observe with what the
   hypothesis said we would see.
4. Assess. Change theories to fit the evidence.