February 2nd

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February 2nd

• Sign in and Participation cards
• Quick Writing
• Review Covenant
• Lecture One Sociological Perspective and
  Analysis
• Homework
• Read Chapter 2 of Introductions

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Quick Writing

• Take 5 minutes and explain the following quote
• Humans make their own history, but they do
  not make it just as they please they do not make
  it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but
  under circumstances directly encountered, given
  and transmitted from the past. - Karl Marx

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The Sociological Perspective

• Lecture One

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What is Sociology?

• Study of Societywhat does that mean?
• It examines the ways in which the forms of social
  structure social categories various social
  institutions affect human attitudes, actions, and
  opportunities.
• Sociology enables us to understand the structure
  and dynamics of society, and their intricate
  connections to patterns of human behavior and
  individual life changes.

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Why Care About Understanding Society?

• We are products of society and society is a
  product of us
• Understand why and how we came to be like we are
• Our position within the social structure
  (society) determines how we will act, think, and
  what resources we have
• Our place in society is the intersection of many
  social relationships
• Gender, race, class, age, geography, sexuality

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Born the Opposite Sex?

• Gender as a social position a place in society
• Constrains what we think our choices are and how
  others think about who we are and how we should
  act
• Social positions come with an inherent set of
  advantages and disadvantages
• By looking at gender we can see
• How the Individual and Society are linked
• Gender, like other social constructions, is both
  a myth and reality

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What do sociologists study?

• Sociologists explore how both individuals and
  collectivities construct, maintain, and alter
  social organization in various ways
• Sociology asks about the sources and consequences
  of change in social arrangements and
  institutions, and about the satisfactions and
  difficulties of planning, accomplishing, and
  adapting to such change
• Areas studied in examining social dynamics
  include culture, socialization, cooperation,
  conflict, power, exchange, inequality, deviance,
  social control, violence, order and social change

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Examining the present with the past

• Humans make their own history, but they do not
  make it just as they please they do not make it
  under circumstances chosen by themselves, but
  under circumstances directly encountered, given
  and transmitted from the past. - Karl Marx
• To understand the present social arrangement in
  society, sociologists must also look into the past

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How sociologists study society

• Sociologists look to explain how and why things
  happen. In every question a sociologist asks and
  every answer they give you will find an
  explanation of the how and why
• Keep this in mind over the semester!

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Critical Thinking is Required

• Sociology is a critical and analytical discipline
  and sociological thinking is a process of
  actively and skillfully conceptualizing,
  applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating

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Beliefs vs. Sociological Analysis

• As social beings, we see the social world through
  our own lens of experience and belief system and
  often make judgments based on our personal
  beliefs
• To remain objective, sociology helps us see how
  that lens was formed and be honest about our
  assumptions
• What we see with sociological analyses often
  challenges many of our thoughts and beliefs
• Come to class prepared to be exposed to alternate
  explanations of the world and to try and
  understand them

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The Sociological Perspective

• Sociology seeks to understand the relationship
  between the individual and society with

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C Wright Mills Sociological Imagination

• A quality of mind that allows us to connect
• Personal troubles of the milieu
• with
• Public issues of social structure
• Examining these relationships gives us the
  knowledge to understand society, our place in it,
  and the ability to make changes

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HIV/AIDS Globally
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Understanding and Explaining HIV/AIDS

• Cultural Explanations
• Virility is strongly linked to masculinity in
  many cultures affected by HIV/AIDS
• Low status of women
• Social Structure Explanations
• Global poverty and inequality create low immune
  systems
• Underdevelopment limits economic opportunities
• Political Explanations
• Lack of adequate health care and access to
  treatment
• Political policies that do not address the issue
• Individual Explanations
• Lack of education and poor choices

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Social Consciousness

• Another sociologist, Peter Berger, believes that
  we need a social consciousness or A form of
  consciousness that enables us to see the
  "reality" behind the "facades."
• He asks us to critically examine the things that
  are familiar to us as unfamiliar
• It can be said that the first wisdom of
  sociology is this things are not what they
  seem.

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Practicing Social Consciousness

• Have you ever asked yourself Why do women shave
  their legs?
• Why is it normal in our
• culture for women to
• shave their legs and
• not men?

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Asking How Why (and when) with Social
Consciousness

• When did this ideal emerge?
• In the 20th Century when womens legs became more
  visible due to shorter skirts and changing
  fashion
• How did this ideal emerge?
• Needed to have the right technology to make
  shaving easy and safe. The safety razor emerged
  on the market in early 20th Century.
• Why did this ideal emerge?
• Anglo-American cultural standard leg hair is
  unfeminine
• Cultural mechanism to increase sexual dimorphism
  (difference between sexes in the same species)

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In Conclusion

• A sociological perspective requires us to think
  critically and analytically about the social
  world around us, our place in it, our
  relationships to others, and our own personal
  beliefs and values
• While sociologists study many aspects of society
  and social issues, the core concepts of the
  discipline are power, inequality, social justice,
  and social change