Chapter 1: You May Ask Yourself- Dalton Conley

Sociology

The study of human societies; their structure and functions, cultures and norms, relational connections

Social Institutions

-a complex group of interdependent positions that together, perform a social role and reproduce themselves over time.

-Examples: Universities, Slavery, Marriage, Military

Sociological Imagination

Ability to connect the most basic, intimate aspects of an individual's life to seemingly impersonal and remote historical facts

Sociological Theory

-Statements of how and why particular facts about the social world are related.

-Examples: Functionalism, Conflict/ Structural Theory, Symbolic Interactionism, Postmodernism, Midrange

August Compte

-invented social physics or positivism

-job of sociologists is to develop secular morality

Functionalism (MACRO)

-"to identify roles that different aspects of phenomena play in keeping society working"

-Functions may be Manifest (Explicit) or Latent (Hidden)

Emile Durkheim

-Functionalism(macro); Suicide and Anomie, rituals

-Problems: how to account for inequality or change; meaning people give to actions/relations; Teleological: ability and status are a-priori (built-in)

-Understand how society holds together the ways that modern capitalism and industrialization have transformed how people relate to one another

-The Division of Labor in Society

Anomie

- developed by Emile Durkheim

-a sense of aimlessness or despair that arises when we can no longer reasonably expect life to be predictable; too little social regulation

One of the main social forces leading to suicide is the sense of normalness resulting from drastic changes in living conditions or arrangements

Positivist Sociology

A strain within sociology that believes the social world can be described and predicted by certain describable relationships.

Conflict Theory

-Conflict between competing interests is the basic animating force of social change and society in general and that social change occurs through revolution and war, not baby steps

-Identify and examine the power relationships that create different aspects of society.

Karl Marx

-Writings provided the theoretical basis for Communism

-Historical Materialism: primarily the conflicts between classes that drove social change throughout history.

-Small number of Capitalists (the bourgeoiseie) and a large number of workers (the proletariat) whose interests were opposed

Symbolic Interactionism

Focus on how face-to-face or group-to-group interactions create the social world

-a micro level theory in which shared meanings, orientations and assumptions form the basic motivations behind people's actions

ex. that people act in response to the meaning that signs and social signals hold for them (red light means stop, green light means go).

Robert Merton

Midrange theory

Midrange Theory

attempts to predict how certain social institutions tend to function

ex. a midrange theorist might develop a theory explaining households, or explaining the relationship between the educational system and the labor market

Feminist Theory

- emerged from the women's movement of the 1970's

-shared many ideas with Marxist theory

-Focused on defining concepts such as sex,gender, and on challenging conventional wisdom by questioning the meanings usually assigned to these concepts.

-emphasis on women's experiences and that a belief that society in general subordinates women

W.E.B. Dubois

Important black sociologist

Developed double consciousness

- he questioned essentialist notions of race and ethnicity

Max Weber

Brought ideas back into history.

Concept of verstehen (understanding) -

-criticized Marx for his focus on the economy and social class

-wrote "Economy and Society"

Interpretive sociology

-a type of scholarship in which researchers imagine themselves experiencing the life positions of the social actors they want to understand rather than treating those people as objects to be examined.

Microsociology

seeks to understand local interactional contexts; its methods of choice are ethnographic, generally including participant observation and in-depth interviews

-they rely on data gathered through participant observation and face to face encounters

Macrosociology

generally concerned with social dynamics at a higher level of analysis- that is, across the breadth of society

-might study immigration policy, or gender norms or the education system.

Positivism

developed by Auguste Comte, believed in a purely scientific, empirical to nature and society.

- it is the approach to sociology that emphasizes the scientific method as an approach to studying the objectively observable behavior of individuals

According to Auguste Comte, what is the proper role of sociologist?

to develop a secular morality

Harriet Martineau

an English social theorist who wrote and addressed topics ranging from the way we educate children to the relationship between federal and state governments and about marriage and inferiority of women

Karl Marx-

Father of Communism

developed Marxism- an alternative to capitalism

Marx believed that is was the conflicts between classes that drove social change throughout history

"each according to his needs"

Verstehen

- from Max Weber

-the basis of interpretive sociology

-suggests that sociologists approach social behavior from the perspective of those engaging in it

Georg Simmel

established what is today referred to as formal sociology, or a sociology of pure numbers.

Double consciousness

a concept conceived by W.E.B. DuBois to describe the two behavioral scripts, one for moving through the world and the other incorporating the external opinions of prejudiced onlookers, which are constantly maintained by African Americans

ex. an African American shopping for groceries is aware that store security is watching him carefully and he makes an effort to get in and out quickly

Functionalism

the theory that various social institutions and processes in society exist to serve some important (or necessary) function to keep society running

Postmodernism

a condition characterized by a questioning of the notion of progress and history, the replacement of narrative within a bunch of existing ideas, and multiple, perhaps even conflicting, identities resulting from disjointed affiliations

- a red light, for example may have different meanings to different groups or individuals in society

-there is no longer one version of history that is correct; everything is up for debate

What are some "cousins" to sociology

history

anthropology

psychology

biology

political science

economics

How is sociology different from other social sciences?

Sociologist focus on the supra individual- or above and beyond just the individual, and addresses the dynamics that affect our behavior in society