Chapter 1 - Section 1.1 & 1.4

Agency

• The capacity for a person to act and make their own individual decisions independently.

• To see the individual as a social being, yet as someone who has the ability to make free choice.

• The ability to make decisions about our life.

The General in the Particular

• Looking at patterns, rather than individual experiences.

• Individual experiences are shaped by these groups.

(Ex: Age, socioeconomic status, etc. shapes our decisions when going to school)

Micro Sociology

• Focus on the social dynamics within a face-to-face settings/interactions.

(Ex: Cultural rules and politeness within convos)

• Represents looking at individuals, and smaller groups/organizations.

(Ex: Looking at the unemployment rate of oil miners in Alberta)

Macro Sociology

• The focus on large scale, society wide social interactions that extend beyond individual interactions.

(Ex: Dynamics within institutions, class structures, gender relations, etc.

Why are women seen as far less than men?)

Global Sociology

• The focus on variables, structures, and process that extend beyond boundaries, states, or specific societies.

(Ex: Issues of climate change, religious conflict, etc.)

Nacirema

• America spelt backwards.

• Seeing the strange in the familiar

Reification

• How abstract concepts, complex processes, or fluid social relationships come to the thought of as “things”

(Ex: Society did something to someone, but society isn’t a tangible “thing”)

Social Structures

• Macro or global levels of interaction as rules, laws, or power relations.

• Repeated patterns of behaviour and social coordination persisting through time.

Society

• A group of people who interact, live within a desirable area, and share a culture.

Sociological Imagination

• How society shapes our lives. How society shapes an individual.

• Aka “Sociological lens or perspective”

• Originated from C. Wright Milis (1916-1962) —→ Defined as how individuals understand their lives, and relate that to the lives of others in relation to history & social structures.

• Personal Thinking —→ Public Issue

• Individual Thinking —→ Connected to larger social structures

Sociology

• The systematic study of society and social interaction.

• Derived from Latin word “Socious” = Companion & Greek Word “Logos” = Speech or Reason. = “Reasoned speech or disclosure abt companionship”

• 
  

The Strange in the Familiar

• Originated from Peter Berger

• Taking distance from things that we take for granted.

• Why do we do the things that we do?

(Ex: Taarof - In Iranian culture, you say no multiple times before accepting something. It’s seen as being polite & genuine.)

Structure