Sociology and the Real World
What Is Sociology?
Sociology: the systematic or scientific study of human society and social behavior, from large-scale institutions and mass culture to small groups and individual interactions.
The term’s Latin and Greek roots, socius and logos, suggest that sociology means the study of society.
Society: a group of people who shape their lives in aggregated and patterned ways that distinguish their group from others.
Howard Becker’s Sociology
According to Howard Becker, sociology is the study of people “doing things together” because neither the individual nor society exists independently of one another.
Our survival is contingent on the fact that we live in various groups (families, neighborhoods, dorms).
Our sense of self derives from our membership in society.
Sociology as a Social Science
Sociology is a social science.
Social sciences: the disciplines that use the scientific method to examine the social world.
The social sciences include fields such as anthropology, psychology, economics, political science, and sometimes history, geography, and communication studies.
Sociology and the Social Sciences
Sociology overlaps with other social sciences, but much of the territory it covers is unique.
History: Both fields compare the past and the present. Sociology is more likely to focus on contemporary society.
Anthropology: Both fields study human culture. Sociology is interested in societies at all levels of development.
Economics, Political Science: These fields examine social institutions. Sociology looks at a range of social institutions.
Geography: Both fields consider the relationship of people to places. Sociology is more concerned with the people.
Communication Studies: Both fields examine human communication. Sociology studies both the social and the interpersonal levels.
Psychology: Both fields study the individual and their relationships. Sociology looks at the individual in relationship to external social forces.
How to Think Like a Sociologist
Sociological perspective: a way of looking at the world through a sociological lens.
Distinguishing between practical knowledge and scientific knowledge is part of building a sociological perspective.
Practical knowledge allows people to get along in their everyday life.
Scientific knowledge is systematic, comprehensive, coherent, clear, and consistent, resulting from questioning and investigation.
Beginner’s Mind
Beginner’s mind: approaching the world without preconceptions in order to see things a new way (Bernard McGrane).
To explore the social world, it is important that we clear our minds of stereotypes, expectations, and opinions so that we can be more receptive to our experiences.
Our greatest obstacle to making new discoveries is our habitual ways of thinking.
Culture Shock
Culture shock: a sense of disorientation that occurs when entering a radically new social or cultural environment.
Normal behaviors in one society or culture may seem very strange in another.
We often don’t think about how strange our own culture is when viewed from an outsider’s perspective.
The Sociological Imagination
Sociological imagination: a quality of the mind that allows us to understand the relationship between our individual circumstances and larger social forces.
C. Wright Mills said that to understand social life, we must understand “the intersection between biography and history.”
The sociological imagination searches for the link between micro and macro levels of analysis.
It allows us to see the connection between a particular situation in our lives and something happening at a broader social level.
One of the most important benefits of using the sociological imagination is access to a world beyond our own immediate sphere, where we can discover radically different ways of experiencing life and interpreting reality.
Levels of Analysis: Micro- and Macrosociology
Microsociology: the level of analysis that studies face-to-face and small-group interactions in order to understand how they affect the larger patterns and structures of society.
Macrosociology: the level of analysis that studies large-scale social structures in order to determine how they affect the lives of groups and individuals.
Sociology’s Family Tree
Theories: abstract propositions that explain the social world and make predictions about the future.
Theories are also sometimes referred to as approaches, schools of thought, perspectives, or paradigms.
Paradigm: a set of assumptions, theories, and perspectives that makes up a way of understanding social reality.
Sociological theories typically address social processes at the microsociological and/or macrosociological level.
Sociology’s Roots: Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte developed a theory of the progress of human thinking that came to be known as positivism.
Positivism assumes that society operates under specific laws that can be described objectively using the scientific method.
Sociology’s Roots: Harriet Martineau
Harriet Martineau was a journalist and a political economist who traveled around the U.S. and wrote about social changes that were radical for this time period.
Martineau translated Comte’s work into English, making his ideas accessible to England and America.
Sociology’s Roots: Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was primarily responsible for the establishment of sociology in Britain and America.
He believed that societies evolve through time by adapting to their changing environment.
Social Darwinism: the application of the theory of evolution and the notion of “survival of the fittest” to the study of society.
Macrosociological Theory
Structural Functionalism: Émile Durkheim
Structural functionalism: a paradigm based on the assumption that society is a unified whole that functions because of the contributions of its separate structures.
Émile Durkheim is the central figure in functionalist theory and studied the social factors that bond people together.
Structural Functionalism: Solidarity
Solidarity: the degree of integration or unity within a particular society; the extent to which individuals feel connected to other members of their group.
Mechanical solidarity: the type of social bonds present in premodern, agrarian societies, in which shared traditions and beliefs created a sense of social cohesion.
Organic solidarity: the type of social bonds present in modern societies, based on difference, interdependence, and individual rights.
Structural Functionalism: Anomie
Anomie: “normlessness”; term used to describe the alienation and loss of purpose that result from weaker social bonds and an increased pace of change.
Structural Functionalism: Religion
Durkheim suggested that religion was a powerful source of social solidarity because it reinforced collective bonds and shared moral values.
Sacred: the holy, divine, or supernatural.
Profane: the ordinary, mundane, or everyday.
Structural Functionalism: Original Principles
Society is conceived as a stable, ordered system made up of interrelated parts or structures.
Structure: a social institution that is relatively stable over time and that meets the needs of a society by performing functions necessary to maintain social order and stability.
Each structure has a function that contributes to the continued stability or equilibrium of the unified whole.
Dysfunction: a disturbance to or undesirable consequence of some aspect of the social system.
Structural Functionalism: Offshoot
Robert Merton identified manifest and latent functions.
Manifest functions: the obvious, intended functions of a social structure for the social system.
Latent functions: the less obvious, perhaps unintended functions of a social structure.
Structural Functionalism: Advantages and Critiques
Functionalism attempts to provide a universal social theory, a way of explaining all institutions of society in one comprehensive model.
Functionalism posits that only dysfunction can create social change, seeing society as static rather than dynamic.
Functionalism’s explanations of social inequality are especially unsatisfying: it sees poverty, racism, and sexism as serving social functions.
However, the mere persistence of an institution should not be seen as an adequate explanation for its existence.
Conflict Theory
Conflict theory: a paradigm that sees social conflict as the basis of society and social change and that emphasizes a materialist view of society, a critical view of the status quo, and a dynamic model of historical change.
Conflict theory posits that social inequality is the basic characteristic of society.
Social inequality: the unequal distribution of wealth, power, or prestige among members of a society.
Conflict Theory: Karl Marx
Karl Marx was a German political economist who inspired conflict theory, sometimes called “Marxism” in social science.
Marx believed that most problems of poverty, crime, and disease were a result of capitalism.
He proposed a radical alternative to the inherent inequalities of this system in the Manifesto of the Communist Party.
Conflict Theory: Proletariat vs. Bourgeoisie
Means of production: anything that can create wealth: money, property, factories, and other types of businesses and the infrastructure necessary to run them.
Proletariat: workers; those who have no means of production of their own and so are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.
Bourgeoisie: owners; the class of modern capitalists who own the means of production and employ wage laborers.
Conflict Theory: Alienation
Alienation: the sense of dissatisfaction the modern worker feels as a result of producing goods that are owned and controlled by someone else.
Conflict Theory: Original Principles
Conflict theory takes a materialist view of society (focused on labor practices and economic reality) and extends it to other social inequalities.
False consciousness: a denial of the truth on the part of the oppressed when they fail to recognize that the interests of the ruling class are embedded in the dominant ideology.
Class consciousness: the recognition of social inequality on the part of the oppressed, leading to revolutionary action.
Conflict Theory: Offshoots
Critical theory: a contemporary form of conflict theory that criticizes many different systems and ideologies of domination and oppression.
Critical theorists were some of the first to see the importance of mass communications and popular culture as powerful ideological tools in capitalist societies.
Critical Race Theory
Critical race theory: the study of the relationship among race, racism, and power.
It argues that racism is deeply embedded in American institutions, including our laws.
Adherents of critical race theory are dedicated not just to studying race—and how it intersects with other identities such as sex and class—but also actively working to end racial oppression.
Feminist Theory
Feminist theory: a theoretical approach that looks at gender inequities in society and the way that gender structures the social world.
Feminist theory developed alongside the twentieth-century women’s rights movement.
Theorists argue that gender and power are inextricably intertwined in society through other social hierarchies, such as race and ethnicity, class, and sexual orientation.
Queer Theory
Queer theory: social theory about gender and sexual identity; emphasizes the importance of difference and rejects ideas of innate identities or restrictive categories.
It asserts that no sexual category is fundamentally deviant or normal; we create such definitions, so we can change them as well.
Conflict Theory: Advantages and Critiques
Praxis: the application of theory to practical action in an effort to improve aspects of society.
Conflict theory argues that a social arrangement’s existence does not mean that it is inherently beneficial.
Weberian Theory: Max Weber
Weber expressed a pessimistic view of social forces such as work ethic, and one of his most overriding concerns was with the process of rationalization.
Rationalization: the application of economic logic to human activity; the use of formal rules and regulations in order to maximize efficiency without consideration of subjective or individual concerns.
Iron cage: Max Weber’s pessimistic description of modern life, in which we are caught in bureaucratic structures that control our lives through rigid rules and rationalization.
Weberian Theory: Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy: a type of secondary group designed to perform tasks efficiently, characterized by specialization, technical competence, hierarchy, written rules, impersonality, and formal written communication.
He believed that bureaucratic goals were taking precedence over traditions, values, or emotions as drivers of individual behavior.
Weberian Theory: Verstehen
Verstehen: “empathic understanding”; Weber’s term to describe good social research, which tries to understand the meanings that individuals attach to various aspects of social reality.
Global Perspective: Eurocentrism and Sociological Theory
Eurocentric: the tendency to favor European or Western histories, cultures, and values over those of non-Western societies.
Microsociological Theory
Symbolic Interactionism
Symbolic interactionism: a paradigm that sees interaction and meaning as central to society and assumes that meanings are not inherent but are created through interaction.
Symbolic interactionism helps us explain both our individual personalities and the ways in which we are all linked together.
Symbolic Interactionism: Founder and Key Contributions
Chicago School: a type of sociology practiced at the University of Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s that centered on urban settings and field research methods.
Inspired by Weber’s concept of verstehen, they focused on the micro level of everyday interactions as the building blocks of larger social phenomena.
Pragmatism
Pragmatism: a perspective that assumes organisms (including humans) make practical adaptations to their environments; humans do this through cognition, interpretation, and interaction.
George Herbert Mead
Mead proposed that both human development and the meanings we assign to everyday objects and events are fundamentally social processes, and that language is the key to development of self and society.
According to Mead, the most important human behaviors consist of linguistic “gestures,” such as words and facial expressions.
Herbert Blumer
Notably, he gave the name “symbolic interactionism” to Mead's theory.
W.E.B. Du Bois
W.E.B. Du Bois did groundbreaking research on the history of the slave trade, post–Civil War Reconstruction, the problems of urban ghetto life, and the nature of Black American society.
Jane Addams
Jane Addams was one of the first proponents of applied sociology—addressing the most pressing problems of her day through hands-on work with the people and places that were the subject of her research.
As a result of her commitment to service, Addams is often considered the founder of social work.
Original Principles
We act toward things on the basis of their meanings.
Meanings are not inherent; rather, they are negotiated through interaction with others.
Meanings can change or be modified through interaction.
Offshoots
Erving Goffman studied how the self is developed through interactions with others in society.
He elaborated on Mead's ideas by using the theatrical metaphor of dramaturgy to describe the ways in which we engage in a strategic presentation of ourselves to others.
Dramaturgy: an approach pioneered by Erving Goffman in which social life is analyzed in terms of its similarities to theatrical performance.
Ethnomethodology: the study of “folk methods” and background knowledge that sustain a shared sense of reality in everyday interactions.
Conversation analysis: a sociological approach that looks at how we create meaning in naturally occurring conversation, often by taping conversations and examining their transcripts.
Advantages and Critiques
Symbolic interactionism argues that all levels of analysis are necessary for sociological understanding and that interactionist theories and methods are critical for a full picture of social life.
New Theoretical Approaches
Postmodern Theory
Postmodernism: a paradigm that suggests that social reality is diverse, pluralistic, and constantly in flux.
Postmodernism developed primarily out of the French intellectual scene in the second half of the twentieth century as a response to modernism.
Modernism: a paradigm that places trust in the power of science and technology to create progress, solve problems, and improve life.
In postmodernism, there are no absolutes: no claims to truth, reason, right, order, or stability.
Everything is therefore relative: fragmented, temporary, and contingent.
Postmodernism posits that “factual” accounts of history are no more accurate than those that might be found in fiction, preferring mini-narratives over “grand narratives.”
Postmodernism can embrace many alternatives to the status quo.
Midrange Theory
Midrange theory: an approach that integrates empiricism and grand theory.
Developed by Robert Merton, midrange theory is a style of theorization that attempts to strike a balance between micro and macro perspectives in sociology.
It aims to build knowledge cumulatively while offering a way to make sociology more effective as a science rather than just a way of thinking.