SA 150 Chapter 1

Week 1- May 11

defining sociology

• “The systematic study of human behaviour in a social context”

• A science

• Victim of its own success, its terms have become a part of everyday language

  •   Ex. Altruism, in group/ out group, stereotypes, youth culture, white-collar crime, significant other, minority group, role model, self-fulfilling prophecy, social dysfunction

Sociological Imagination

• Personal troubles

• Social issues

  • Personal troubles cannot be separate from social issues

  • It is important to look at troubles in the context of how social and personal troubles combine

• Microsociology vs Macrosociology

  • These two ideas are connected

How are grandparent-grandchildren ties changing

• “Grandparent ties: reflections on continuity and change across three generations”

•   Kemp. 2007

  •   Half of families

    • Culture of dissociation

      • Weak family ties

    • Cultures of affinity

      • Strong family ties

  •   Half of families

    • Lots of variation

      • This is caused by physical distance, divorce, individual behaviour

  • Conclusion

    • Grands can be the most stable figures in family shifts

  • Microsociology view

    • Focuses on social interactions among induvial people and groups

second grandparent study

• The assistance from grandparents was smaller than expected in rural farmland vs rural non farmland

• Macro sociological view

  • Research with a focus on broad social structures that characterizes societies

meso sociological work

-              In-between macro and micro

-              Workplace culture

structure and agency

•   “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”

  • Karl Marx

Does class effect who ask for help

• Middle class kids ask for more help from teachers

  • Better able to complete assignments, wait less time for help, get more help

• First gen uni students are less likely to ask for help

  •    Don’t ask for help because of, pre-existing personality, and negative mindsets

agency

• Agency is purposeful and reflective action (conscious behaviour)

•   Behaviours and beliefs of individuals that cannot be fully determined

• Structure effects people’s actions

Common sense

•   “Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18”

  • Albert Einstein

•   Beliefs without rigorous support

the sociological paradigms

•   Functionalism/ Structural functiontionalism

•    Conflict theory

•   Symbolic interactionalism

Functionalism- Coent (first half of the 1800’s

• Wanted to make a new science that is linked to social phenomenon

  • Believed sociology is a science

  • Linked to positivism

  • Coent wanted to use objective measures to describe social phenomenon’s

• Scientists and phosphors were linked in this period

•   Marx and Durkheim

Functionalism- Durkheim (later part of the eighteenth century)

•   Build on Coent’s ideas to build functionalism

•   Held an interest in macro ideas

•   Held metaphor of the body

•   Each institution has its role and interacts with others

  • They even shape peoples behaviours

functionalism- parsons

• Similar goal to Durkheim

• 1. The institutions that exist are there to for fill the needs of society

o   2. People have the goal of getting alone so they will follow expectations to get along with everyone.

§   People learn and internalize norms

o   3. Thoughts institutions had feedback mechanisms

Didn’t expect much deviance

functionalism

• Individual isnt shaped by institutions but determined by them

• Looks at whys and casues

• Circal reasoning

  •   “why did med schools develop?”

    • They developed to train heath authorities

  • “How do we know med schools are the only way to training medical authorities?”

    •   This is an example of a question functionists have a hard tie answering

• There aren’t a lot of funcionists left in sociology

conflict theory

• Didn’t like functionalism

• Began more influential in the 1950s/1960s

• C. Wright Mills started to write against functionsim

  • Details are important

  • Thought functionists ignored power

• Sees people and society as shaped by inequality

  • Tension in who structures should serve

• very infuentional in psych

Questions a conflict theorist may ask

•   “how do me schools train MDs how to interact with others in the health care field?”   

  • How does the power imbalance happen (my do MDs see themselves as superior)

  • Mezzo type question

Symbolic interactionalism