What is Sociology

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What is Sociology?

• Sociology is the systematic and scientific study
  of human behavior, social groups, and society
• Basic insights
• Who we are is affected by the groups we belong to
• Interaction takes place in patterned ways
• Two questions
• Why do people behave the way they do?
• Why are their social situations the way they are?
  (Coser et al. 19914)

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Sociology as a science

• systematic methods to study the social and
  natural worlds and the knowledge obtained by
  those methods (Henslin 2007b3)
• Built on the logic of correlation (cause and
  effect) explanations
• Social Sciences Anthropology Economics
  Political Science Psychology

3
Sociological Perspective

• Seeing the general in the particular
• Seeing the strange in the familiar
• A collective view beyond the individual view
• Peter Berger (196323)
• the first wisdom of sociology is thisthings are
  not what they seemSocial reality turns out to
  have many layers of meaning.

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Sociological Imagination (Mills 1959 2000)

• Sociological Imagination ...the vivid awareness
  of the relationship between experience and the
  wider society.
• The sociological imagination helps us to grasp
  the relationship between history and biography
• links between history and biography
• links between public issues and personal troubles

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Origins of Sociology

• The Enlightenment
• A New Industrial Economy
• The Growth of Cities
• Political Change
• A New Awareness of Society

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European Beginnings

• Two goals of early European social philosophers
  and sociologists
• understand and explain how and why societies
  enduredto understand the aspect of order and
  stability
• what caused societies to change and what shaped
  the nature of that change

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Early Sociologists

• Auguste Comte
• Positivism Father of Sociology
• Herbert Spencer
• Social Darwinism
• Karl Marx
• Bourgeoisie proletariat
• Society driven by economic forces
• Max Weber
• Verstehen
• Importance of values

• Emile Durkheim
• Sociology as a discipline
• Study Social Facts
• Suicide group integration
• Georg Simmel
• Importance of interaction and role of social
  types
• Harriet Martineau
• Work was ignored but published before Weber and
  Durkheim
• Translated Comte

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Seeing the General in the Particular
PER 100,000 PERSONS
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Sociology in North America

• Jane Addams (1860-1935) and Social Reform
• W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) and Race Relations

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Sociology in North America

• 1940s - Talcott Parsons and social theory
  emphasis
• 1950s C. Wright Mills return to social reform

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The Sociological Imagination

• took issue with American sociological practice in
  the fifties
• nowadays men often feel that their private lives
  are a series of traps
• their visions and their powers are limited to
  the close-up scenes of job, family and
  neighborhood
• "neither the life of an individual nor the
  history of a society can be understood without
  understanding both, we need to develop a way of
  understanding the interaction between individual
  lives and society.

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Sociological Theory

• Macro-sociology study of society as a whole
• society shapes individuals
• positivism
• perspectives
• consensus (Functionalism)
• conflict (Marxism)

• Micro-sociology study of individuals within
  society

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Major Theoretical Perspectives Functionalism

• How is social order maintained?
• Subsystems/institutions have functions mutually
  interdependent
• Concern for social order, stability, and
  integration
• What function does this play?
• Manifest and Latent functions
• Dysfunctions
• Social change occurs through evolution

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Major Theoretical PerspectiveConflict/Marxism

• How is society organized and who benefits from
  this?
• Social life is characterized by conflict over
  power and resources
• Social change comes from conflict
• Marxism focuses on how people organize themselves
  to satisfy their material needs

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Sociological Theory

• Macro-sociology study of society as a whole
• society shapes individuals
• positivism
• perspectives
• consensus (Functionalism)
• conflict (Marxism)

• Micro-sociology study of individuals within
  society
• individuals create society
• social construction of reality
• perspective
• Symbolic Interactionism

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Major Theoretical PerspectiveSymbolic
Interactionism

• How, and in what way, do people interpret and
  negotiate their surroundings?
• Key assumptions
• People act toward things based on meanings
• People give meanings to things based on
  interactions with others
• Meanings change as relationships change

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Schools of Symbolic Interactionism

• Chicago School

• Iowa School

• individual is subjective unpredictable
• constructing reconstructing our social roles
• changing negotiating statuses roles
• participant observation ethnographic methods
• explanatory investigative theorizing

• generalizable predictable
• adherence to roles create meaning but not the
  roles themselves
• stable, predictable, controllable networks of
  statuses and roles
• empirical methods
• deductive theorizing with prediction controls
  of social phenomena

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Major Theoretical Perspectives

• Which one is best?
• Why did SI begin in US?

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Max Weber and social action

• subjective meaning that humans attach to their
  actions
• believed more and more of our behavior was being
  guided by zweckrational
• modern society shift in motivation
• based on structural and historical forces.

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Ways of knowing Kinds of Truth

• Belief or faith
• Knowing without empirical evidence
• Expert testimony
• Simple agreement
• Science
• Logical system based on direct, systematic
  observation

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Major Types of Research

• Quantitative research focuses on data that can be
  measured numerically (comparing rates of suicide,
  for example).
• Qualitative research focuses on interpretive
  description rather than statistics to analyze
  underlying meanings and patterns of social
  relationships.

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Sociological Research

• Research Model 4 broad steps
• formulating a research question
• collecting data
• analyzing the data
• share results with peers

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Deductive and Inductive Logical Thought
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Variables

• Types of variables
• Independent the variable that causes the change
• Dependent the variable that changes (its value
  depends upon the independent variable)
• Correlation
• A relationship by which two or more variables
  change together
• Cause and effect
• A relationship in which change in one variable
  causes change in another
• Spurious correlation
• An apparent, though false, relationship between
  two or more variables caused by some other
  variable

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Correlation Does Not Mean Causation

• Conditions for cause and effect to be considered
• Correlation
• Time
• Correlation is not spurious
• Storks and babies
• Ice cream consumption and crime
• Music lessons and high SAT scores
• Web usage and tolerance (2000 GSS)

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Who we study

• Population
• The entire group of people who are the focus of
  the research
• Sample
• The part of the population that represents the
  whole
• Random Sample
• Drawing a sample from a population so that every
  element of the population has an equal chance of
  being selected

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Research Methods Survey Research

• Describes a population without interviewing each
  individual.
• Able to gather data on large numbers of people at
  a lower cost
• Standardized questions force respondents into
  categories.
• Relies on self-reported information, and some
  people may not be truthful.

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Research Methods Analysis of Existing Data

• Also known as secondary analysis
• Less cost in collection of data
• You have to rely on validity and ethics of
  someone else
• Sometimes data does not fit well with research
  question
• Examples NCVS, UCR/NIBRS, Census, GSS NORC

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Research Methods Experiments

• Study the impact of certain variables on
  subjects attitudes or behavior.
• Designed to create real-life situations.
• Used to demonstrate a cause-and-effect
  relationship between variables.
• Some behavior is not testable in this way
• Artificial environment

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Research Methods Field Research/Ethnographic

• Study of social life in its natural setting.
• Observing and interviewing people where they
  live, work, and play.
• Generates observations that are best described
  verbally rather than numerically.
• Subject to interpretation
• Danger of going native

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Ethical Guidelines for Research

• Must strive to be technically competent
  fair-minded
• Must disclose findings in full without omitting
  significant data be willing to share their data
  
• Must protect the safety, rights and privacy of
  subjects
• Brajuha research project
• Must obtain informed consent-- subjects are
  aware of risks and responsibilities and agree
• Humphrey Tearoom Trade
• Must disclose all sources of funding avoid
  conflicts of interest
• Must demonstrate cultural and gender sensitivity

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Limitations of Scientific Sociology

• Human behavior is too complex to predict
  precisely any individuals actions
• The mere presence of the researcher may affect
  the behavior being studied
• Hawthorne Effect
• Social patterns change
• Sociologists are part of the world they study
  making value-free research difficult