Lesson 1: What is Sociology?

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Lesson 1 What is Sociology?

• Intro to SociologyRobert Wonser

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Lesson Outline

• What does society look like?
• What is sociology?
• Levels of Analysis
• The Sociological Perspective
• Starting your sociological journey

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Cool Insights from Sociology

• Humans cannot be understood apart from social
  context (i.e. society)
• Society makes us who we are by structuring out
  interactions and laying out an orderly world
  before us
• Society is a social construction, that is, it is
  an idea created by humans (i.e. doesnt exist in
  the biological world but only in the social
  world) through social interaction and given a
  reality through our understanding of it and our
  collective actions.

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Society Influences You

• Death Related to society? Of course!

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Baby Names
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Names that have gained the most popularity, 2004
2010 ...Or, the names Ill begin seeing
all the time in 2022-2028
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What Does Society Look Like?

• While the idea of society is familiar, describing
  it can be difficult. Ultimately society is made
  up of many different components, such as culture,
  race, family, education, social class, and
  peoples interactions.
• People who share a culture and territory

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Meaning through Interaction

• People actively and collectively shape their own
  lives, organizing their social interactions and
  relationships into a meaningful world.
• Sociologists study this social behavior by
  seeking out its patterns.
• Patterns are crucial to our understanding of
  society

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Society

• Society is a group of people who shape their
  lives in aggregated and patterned ways that
  distinguish their group from other groups.

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The Social Sciences

• Social Sciences are the disciplines that use the
  scientific method to examine the social world, in
  contrast to the natural sciences, which examine
  the physical world.
• Examples of social sciences include economics,
  psychology, geography, communication studies,
  anthropology, history, and political science.

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How Sociology fits in
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What is Sociology?

• Sociology is the systematic or scientific study
  of human society and social behavior, from
  large-scale institutions and mass culture to
  small groups and individual interactions.
• Sociology is also the study of reifications, or
  social constructions.

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Sociology

• Howard Becker defined sociology as the study of
  people doing things together.
• This reminds us that society and the individual
  are inherently connected, and each depends on the
  other.
• Sociologists study this link how society affects
  the individual and how the individual affects
  society.

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Levels of Analysis

• We can study society from different levels
• Microsociology is the level of analysis that
  studies face-to-face and small-group interactions
  in order to understand how they affect the larger
  patterns and institutions of society.
• Microsociology focuses on small-scale issues.
• Ex Symbolic Interactionism

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Levels of Analysis (cont)

• Macrosociology is the level of analysis that
  studies large-scale social structures in order to
  determine how they affect the lives of groups and
  individuals.
• Macrosociology focuses on large-scale issues.
• Ex Functionalism, Conflict Theory

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How We Use Levels of Analysis

• Pam Fishman took a micro-level approach to
  studying issues of power in malefemale
  relationships.
• She found that in conversation, women ask nearly
  three times as many questions as men do, perhaps
  because a speaker is much more likely to ask a
  question if he or she does not expect to get a
  response by simply making a statement.

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How We Use Levels of Analysis

• Christine Williams took a macro-level approach to
  studying women in male-dominated occupations and
  men in female-dominated occupations.
• She found that women in male-dominated positions
  faced limits on their advancement (the glass
  ceiling), while men in female-dominated positions
  experienced rapid rates of advancement (the glass
  escalator).

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Levels of Analysis (cont)

• When conducting research, methodology involves
  the process by which one gathers and analyzes
  data.
• Quantitative research translates the social world
  into numbers that can be treated mathematically
  this type of research often tries to find
  cause-and-effect relationships.
• Any type of social statistic is an example of
  quantitative research.

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Levels of Analysis (cont)

• Qualitative research works with non-numerical
  data such as texts, fieldnotes, interview
  transcripts, photographs, and tape recordings
  this type of research often tries to understand
  how people make sense of their world.
• Participant observation, in which the researcher
  actually takes part in the social world he or she
  studies, is an example of qualitative research.

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The Sociological Imagination

• C. Wright Mills used the term sociological
  imagination to describe the ability to look at
  issues from a sociological perspective.
• Personal troubles versus public issues
• Ex unemployment, obesity

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The Sociological Perspective

• The sociological perspective is a quality of the
  mind that allows us to understand the
  relationship between our particular situation in
  life and what is happening at a social level.
• Sociological perspective and sociological
  imagination are often used interchangeably.

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The Sociological Perspective

• When using a sociological perspective, one
  focuses on the social context in which people
  live and how that social context has an impact on
  individuals lives.
• This is the essence of what sociology does.
• Making the familiar strange

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Using the Sociological Perspective

• In small groups
• How would you explain the following social
  problems using the sociological
  imagination/perspective?
• Obesity
• Homelessness/Poverty
• Unemployment
• Marriage
• The metropolis
• War

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The Sociological Perspective (cont)

• One way to gain a sociological perspective is to
  attempt to create in ourselves a sense of culture
  shock, which is a sense of disorientation that
  occurs when one enters a radically new social or
  cultural environment.

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The Sociological Perspective (cont)

• Bernard McGrane suggests that people wanting to
  use a sociological perspective should utilize a
  beginners mind, which means approaching the
  world without preconceptions in order to see
  things in a new way.

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Starting Your Sociological Journey

• An important distinction can be made between the
  everyday actor, who has the practical knowledge
  needed to get through daily life, but not
  necessarily the scientific or technical knowledge
  of how things work,

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Starting Your Sociological Journey

• and the social analyst, who studies the social
  world in a systematic, comprehensive, coherent,
  clear, and consistent manner in the pursuit of
  scientific knowledge.
• Both approaches have strengths and weaknesses.

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Take Away Points

• Humans cannot be understood apart from the social
  context they live in (society, culture and time
  place)
• The world around us profoundly shapes and
  influences who we are, how we behave and even
  how/what we think.
• It is the job of the sociologist to understand
  how this process works and to what effect.

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Lesson Quiz

• 1. Which of the following is NOT an example of a
  social science?
• a. biology
• b. political science
• c. psychology
• d. economics

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Lesson Quiz

• 2. Sociology is defined as
• a. the scientific study of humans.
• b. the study of ancient cultures and behavior.
• c. the study of how the brain works.
• d. the study of human society and social
  behavior.

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Lesson Quiz

• 3. __________ is the level of analysis that
  studies face-to-face and small-group interactions
  in order to understand how those interactions
  affect the larger patterns and institutions of
  society.
• a. Microsociology
• b. Macrosociology
• c. Sociology
• d. Social science

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Lesson Quiz

• 4. The glass escalator effect refers to the
• a. limits on the advancement of women in the
  workplace.
• b. limits on the advancement of men in the
  workplace.
• c. rapid rate of upward mobility for women.
• d. rapid rate of upward mobility for men in
  female-dominated workplaces.

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Lesson Quiz

• 5. A sense of disorientation that occurs when you
  enter a radically new social or cultural
  environment is called
• a. cultural mind.
• b. culture shakes.
• c. cultural fear.
• d. culture shock.

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For Next Time

• How we come to understand the social world
• Theories and Theorists
• Read! (check your syllabus for assigned readings!)