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Sociology

study of human society studying the lives of people, groups, societies, behavior, analyzes the patterns of individual experience; making the familiar strange

Sociology is about

understanding how society works

Berger states that you should NOT

judge normatively

What is sociology similar to?

1. cultural anthropology, but sociology has more methods, comparison, etc
2. biology, but sociology focuses larger scale
3. economics, numbers discipline
4. political science, but sociology focuses on more than just power
5. history, but sociology focuses on the present day as well as the past

According to \____ sociological insights could just as well be used for as good as evil

Berger

Sociology is the systemic study of society and sociological perspective is

one that analyzes patterns of individual experience

Sociology focuses on

making comparisons across cases to find patterns, create hypotheses about how societies work, how they worked before

Individualism

specific to a single person's psychology or situation, everyone is unique

Universalism

apply to all humans across cultures

Discipline of sociology as distinct from other social sciences

systemic, comparative approach to discovering patterns in how society works

Sociological Imagination creator

C. Wright Mills

Sociological imagination

connect personal experience to society at large, make the familiar strange

In Mills opinion...

we can't begin to understand our personal lives without thinking about the social context

Sociological imagination 3 parts

Biography, History, Society

The government, google, apple, family, language, and gender are examples of what

social institutions

Social institution

networks of structures in society that work to socialize the groups of people within them

other examples of social institutions include

the legal system, labor market, educational system, military, family

Social institutions are not dependent on

any one individual to sustain them

Social identity

the way individuals define themselves in relation to the groups they are a part of or in relation to groups they cannot choose not to be a part of

examples of social identities include

profession, hobbies, frats, sororities, race, gender, daughter, son, student

Auguste Comte

determine logic or scientific laws governing human behavior, social physics, positivism

determine logic or scientific laws governing human behavior

social physics, positivism

first sociologist

Comte

systematic data based analysis can be applied to

understanding the social world as well as the natural world

What are Comte's 3 social stages?

1. God's will plan: theological stage
2. Enlightenment: metaphysical stage
3. Social physics: scientific stage

Harriet Martineau

first to translate Comte's written works to English, earliest feminist social scientists stating marriage and the inferiority of women

What sociologists form the discipline of sociology/sociological theory?

Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim

Marxism

historical materialism, conflict between social classes, economic is the root cause of everything in society, superstructure

Historical materialism

Karl Marx, identifies class conflict as the primary cause of social change.

What does Marx believe to be the makeup of current society?

Small number of capitalists and large number of workers

social facts

(Durkheim) the aspects of social life that shape our actions as individuals

Max Weber

expanded Marx's theory to include economics, culture, and politics into sociological analysis, interpretive sociology; culture, ideology, and beliefs shape economics

Verstehen

the meanings people attach to their actions

example of using ones sociological imagination

being puzzled by how people in another country greet one another and then thinking about why they might do it that way

one factor is said to influence another factor, it is called

causality

types of data collection used in social research

participant observation, interviews, survey research, experimentation, content analysis, historical methods

deductive approach

starts with a theory, develops a hypothesis, makes empirical observations, analyzes data and modifies original theory

inductive approach

starts with empirical observations and then works to form a theory and determines if correlation exists

to prove causation...

correlation and time order are established and alternative explanations are ruled out

Emile Durkheim

saw that the division of labor has social and moral consequences as well as brought about positivist sociology, anomie, and functionalism

Anomie

a sense of aimlessness or despair that arises when we can no longer reasonably expect life to be predictable, possibly due to drastic changes in living conditions or arrangements; too little social regulation; normlessness

Posivist sociology

the social world can be described and predicted by certain observable relationships (Durkheim)

Positivism (Comte)

social physics

strain within sociology that believe that the social world can be described and predicted by certain observable relationships

positivism

Georg Simmel

formal sociology, or a sociology of pure numbers (for instance, how a group of two is different than a group of three), network theory, etc

Social ecology

humans' behaviors and personalities are shaped by their social and physical environments

Key characteristics of American sociology

social ecology, Chicago school, empirical research, community studies, cultural sociology, social self from Cooley and Mead, meaning emerges from social interaction

Social self/looking glass self

self concept is derived from how we think others view us

who theorized looking glass self

Cooley

\____ developed a theory about how the social self develops over the course of childhood

Mead

Infants only know \___ but learn \___ and \____ and develop \________ which allows them to apply norms and behaviors

I, me, other, generalized other

\___ stressed the importance of play, imitation, and games to help children recognize one another, distinguish between self and other, grasp the idea that other people can have multiple roles

Mead

sociologist that argues the key element in determining the form of social relations in a group is the size of the group

Simmel

role theory

Robert Merton

W.E.B. DuBois

double consciousness, anomie from sudden freedom in the south sparked crime, class inequality drives communal progress, talented 10th, NAACP

Double consciousness

maintaining 2 cultural scripts, coined for black people taking in society's view of oneself and thus they are restrained to others' perceptions of them

Jane Addams

the founder of Hull House, which provided English lessons for immigrants, daycares, and child care classes, dubbed social worker

Social facts

The elements that serve some function in society, such as the laws, morals, values, religions, customs, rituals, and rules that make up a society

Structural functionalism

each element of society serves a particular function to keep the entire system in equilibrium (Talcott Parsons)

Manifest

obvious; very clear; evident

Latent

hidden, present but not realized

Feminist Theory

sociology as a discipline and society as a whole subordinate women; therefore, sociologists must take to women's stories as legitimate and advocate for policy change

biological determinism

the belief that men and women behave differently due to inherent sex differences related to their biology

Symbolic Interactionism

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

Microsociology

The study of human behavior in contexts of face-to-face interaction, participant observation, interviews, etc

Macrosociology

across breadth of society

Innumeracy

The lack of quantitative literacy; not having an ability to reason with numbers and other mathematical concepts, which leads to mutant statistics and misunderstanding of data

Mutant Statistics

Bad statistics that are spread around; the more shocking a statistic is the more likely it will be repeated, thus the worse a statistic the stronger the likelihood of spreading

What does Weiss say about qualitative interviews?

Interviewees must be treated with respect and attentive listening; because memories are reconstructions of events, distortion can occur even accidentally; must care for the interviewee

Feminist critique

acknowledge kinship with respondents to humanize them

How does Weiss say we can use surveys?

surveys can compliment qualitative data by strengthening arguments through utilizing larger statistics

Constructionist Perspective

the ability of investigators to get as close to reality as possible depends on the preconceptions and concerns

Investigator bias

choosing respondents, encouraging answers, or writing reports to achieve a personal goal with the interview

Quantitative Research

information about the social world that is already or can be readily converted to numerical data using the scientific method of control and treatment groups, noting causality through eliminating other factors, etc

Qualitative Research

documents meanings that actions engender in social participants or describe mechanisms by which social processes occur; cannot be converted to numeric form; causality through descriptions and ruling out other possibilities

goal of sociological research

to show how individual lives are intimately related to the social forces that exist beyond us

deductive reasoning

theory -\> hypothesis -\> empirical observations -\> analysis to confirm, reject, or modify original theory

inductive reasoning

empirical observations -\> theory

Correlation/association

between two events X and Y; occurs when there is an observed mutual relationship between the two events

Causal mechanism

what exact effect exists

causality

change in 1 factor changes another factor

What needs to be established before confirming causality?

1) time order

2) correlation

3) ruling out alternative explanations

you need \___ to have causation

correlation

reverse causality

a situation in which the researcher believes that A results in a change in B, but B, in fact, is causing A

spurious correlation

an apparent but false relationship between two (or more) variables that is caused by some other variable

independent variable

a measured factor that the researcher believes has a causal impact on the dependent variable

dependent variable

outcome that a researcher is trying to explain

key independent variable

the most important independent variable

moderating variable

variable that alters the relation between the independent variable and the dependent variable

mediating variable

positioned between the DV and IV, but has no effect on the relationship

hypothesis

a proposed relationship between two variables with a direction (positive \= same, negative \= different)

operalizationalization

process of assigning a precise method for measuring a term being examined for use in a study; defining your term

alternative hypothesis

opposite of null hypothesis

validity

Actually measuring exactly what you intend to measure

Realiability

consistency of measurement

Generalizability

Extent to which research results apply to a range of individuals not included in the study

white coat effect

the effects that researchers have on the very processes and relationships they are studying by virtue of being there through changed behavior of participants

Reflexivity

analyzing and critically considering our own role in, and effect on, our research