Soc Lecture Notes
8/26:
Ch 1: What is Sociology?
Personal Notes:
what differentiates Sociology from other studies of human (Astrology) is that it’s based on observable Data
The Scientific study of “something social”: where the something social can be brad or narrow depending on your discipline or focuses
the difference between other social science and sociology is that sociology is so brad so niches can be doing the same thing as a different social science but is still under sociology not the other social science
Social Science - the study of social data to make conclusions on human behavior through the application of the scientific method (sociology, phycology, communications, political science, criminology)
AI Notes:
Sociology definition, including scientific methods and subjects of study.
The speaker defines sociology as the scientific/systematic study of human behavior, social interactions, and communities.
The speaker identifies subjects that are not sciences, such as people watching, sports, and working at a shelter.
Sociology definition and its relation to astrology.
Unknown speaker discusses astrology and its limitations.
The speaker defines sociology as the scientific study of social life, with examples including the study of how people interact and social patterns.
The speaker emphasizes the flexibility of sociology as a discipline, with different sociologists providing varying definitions.
The speaker highlights the importance of understanding the focuses and limitations of each sociologist's definition.
8/28:
(Might use Honor Lock for exams)
Patterns - we look for patterns in social data to make reliable conclusion
Sociologist assume that people follow patterns so we can make predictions of there behaviors, if not then there is nothing to study
Ex: When a friends boyfriend cheats and she asks if it will happen again, we would advise them to break up even if the boyfriend says it won’t happen again.
Note: Sociology doesn't work as well for one person, made for groups of people
Problems that come up:
Have to put aside your ego, your experiences are not universal
“I succeeded therefore everyone can”
Sociology is on a baud scale so there are a lot of outlier sittuation that you can’t use as evidence to disprove the over all trends.
“on average women do most of the house work but my dad dose the most in our house so thats not true”
Common Sense - not a relayable explanation, often wrong, subjective, not backed by data
Basic Concepts #1:
Sociological Imagination - the application of imaginative thought to asking and answering (Mills), zooming in and out
the purpose of sociology is to understand the issue by looking at the big (large scale social issues) and small picture (personal experience). We have to use both perspectives to solve the issue.
Before this, we only focused on the big picture
Ex: Don’t have a job? there is an employment issue but also you need to put in the work to get a job
Social Structure - the underlying patterns in human behavior that we count on
They change depending on where you are and who you are with and we usually don’t notice till it starts breaking down and when the pattern doesn't work it throes you off.
Ex: Driving on the high way, we assume that people will “drive safely”
Basic Concept #2:
Socialy Construction - an idea/ practice that we agree exists
Ex: Money, gender
Social Order - the smooth running of social situation internalized through Socialization
Agency and Structure - What makes a person a person?
Ex: Dose Sophie not eat bugs because she dosn’t want to eat them? or do people never eat bugs
Development of Sociological Thinking:
1800’s:
Started in Europe because of Industrialization (the rise of the factory and mass producing) and Urbanization (big cities)
The rich guys didn’t like the change in the cities (the smell, the poverty, crime, overcrowding) they thought society was falling apart so they started trying to fix it.
The church (do whatever got tells you) and Monarchies (do whatever I say) was loosing control over society, because of this people where able to ask more questions (The Enlightenment)
The Enlightenment - we are the best thing scence Rome and Greek and so we should concer everyone else.
Comte - compt (1798-1857) - Consitered the founder of Sociology (kind of, he just made it very popular) but he is the one who brought these ideas to Europe
He was a social philosifist who believed we should study society through the scientific method
Spencer (1820-1903) - came up with Social Darwinism, society runs through the social order of survival of the fittest.
Leave it alone, the people who are struggling are meant to be there because they are less than, that is just nature
The Big 3: Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber
Influened the foundation of Sociology even to today
Marx (1818-1883) - a political economist who focused on capitalism and “how dose private proporty cause social problems?”
9/2
The Big 3: Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber
Influenced the foundation of Sociology even to today
Marx (1818-1883) - a political economist who focused on capitalism before the time of Sociology and “how dose private property cause social problems (wealth you use to make more wealth)?”
Critical of Capitalism and thought that it was destructive because it would eat itself in the pursuit of wealth. But also thought that it was necessary
Falls apart when workers are cut down and squeezed till there's nothing left, class systems that bread conflict and repression (owners and workers)
Owners are in competition to exploit workers as much as possible to gain wealth and capitals so they don’t become workers, workers are not people they are just labor and predictable
Alienation - the disconnect between a person being labor at work and an actual person when your not working, feelings of dread
materialist conception - what drives society and social change are material conditions or how things are set up and quality of life (housing cost, wages, economic state) not big ideas
Communism - workers utopia with the end of social class and end of private property
taking guesses on what society would look like without these problems
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) - What keeps society together? first academic sociologys and created the first department of sociology. First to study Suicide.
After seeing Urbanization and society falling apart and using scientific investigation to find answers on how to keep society together
Studied Suicide because people don’t just kill themselves for no reason, drastic external or internal factors. Suicide is not rare and not personal and Psychology doesn't have all the answers because it’s too small of a scale.
social facts - objective things that can be studied about society and shape our actions
organic solidarity - we are kept together in a society because we don’t know how to do everything (division of labor)
social constraint - people on there own are distructive and the system keeps them from being destructive
anomie - when social norms loose their hold and people turn to deviant behavor. Occurs during great change or social stress. ( civil war, natual dissastors, war)
Max Weber (1864-1920) - Anti Marx and his students. anti How is increased rationalization (things becoming more efficient and or organized) affecting society?
What are other systems contribute to things being more efficient, how dose it impact people, what is it going to look like in the future as we keep getting efficient
Ex: lecture halls are very efficient but it is trying to educating everyone generally and no individualized instruction. So we learn less and it is less interesting and less tailored.
bureaucracy - organizations made of clear hierarchy and written rules, can squeezes the humanity out of the system
“Understanding” - understanding society by looking at how people move through the world and make sence of it
Ideal Types -
Harriet Martineau (1802-1876): translated Comte to English and studied groups with less social power in America and how they increased their ability to socialize with the outside world.
How woman created religiose groups because they couldn’t leave the house and they influenced the creation of Probation
WEB Du Bois (1868-1964): the study of Race in America and that the color line persisted after slavery and the Civile Rights Act
Double Consciousness - Black Americans seeing themselves from the perspective of America and yourself and creates a lot of trauma.
Connected race to social and economic stratification and very influential in politics
9/4
Micro+Macro Sociology - Zooming in a Zooming out
Macro - focusing on large social groups, countries, cities
Micro - using individual interactions to understand large scale societys
The 3 Grand Theories: the foundational/origin ideas of Sociology
Functionalism (through mid 20th century)- how social events can be explained by the functions they preform, society is a machine with several individual parts that interact “how dose this keep society going?”
People will focuses on how all the different parts of society connect and effect each other and society as a hole, the goal is social equilibrium and society as a hole keeps operating. Durkheim, Comte, Darwinism where the foundation of this idea
Mills thought that this was a wrong approach because it leaves out the individual experience, also these people don’t care about solving society problems because the goal is social equilibrium and society as a hole keeps operating
Ultimately everything is functional so it doesn’t actually explain anything
Focuses so much on stability so it can’t explain why things fall apart, also a focused on the middle and upper class, tend to assume everything is fuctional and nothing is a problem
Ex: Murder is functional because it keeps the justice system working, gives jobs, and brings society together
manifest + latent functions - the obvious/intended and discrete/not intended reasons for a social behavior, was made to try and save this concept
Conflict Theory - the role of inequality and how those groups gain power to shape society for them “how dose this benefit the people in power?” not the presence of conflict but the focuses on power and inequality
ex: Marxism, Feminism, Critical Race Theory
Weakness - focuses so much on competition that it can’t explain social stability or how small groups gain power without conflict, sometimes assumes conclusions without data to back it up
Symbolic Interactionism - how people make meaning and are motivated to action by those meaning “what dose that mean to the people doing it?”
Strong micro-sociological focus, assumes reality is subjective (it changes based on perspective), no inherent meaning (the only meanings thing have is what we give it), learn and create meaning from interaction (we gain meanings from others and they change)
Ex: Slang, social norms, fashion
Ignores large scale influences, assumes people aren’t making choices, assumes people do things rationally, tends to be very vague to make small scale applicable to large scale, unable to generalize results to large groups
9/9
What makes something a science? the methods you use to run experiments to draw conclusions from reliable patterns
these qualifications of the methods can change over time due to over time the tools and methods get better, SCIENCE DOSE NO PROVE THINGS
when the data gets better, discredits past data as scientific
facts - an observation that can be measured and backed up by some kind of evidence
Scientific Law - an observation that has no known variation and is universally accepted within the community, providing a solid foundation for theories and assumptions.
Hypothesis - an educated guess about the relationship between variables
Theory - proposed explanations for the observations deriving from hypothesis that can be changed and refined
Experiments:
Constants - any factor that says the same, race, what planet we’re on
Variables - factors that can change in an experiment, where you live, number of people in one place, religion, age
Correlation - there is an observable change between two variables
just because two variables move the same doesn't mean they cause each other, there can be a third variable or not related at all
people use correlations to explain things to keep people under control and on their side
Causation - indicates that one variable directly affects another
Results/conclusions do not justify the process
population - the entire group of people you are making conclusions about
sample - portion of the population that you actually study
representative samples - the results you get from the part that is the same, very hard to do unless you have complete access to the entire population
random sampling, large sample
Methods:
Quantitative over Qualitative - quantitative data is seen as more objective but qualitative data can provide deeper insights into the data
numbers give you snapshots, words give you depth
ex: would you rather be in class over jail? so All the students want to be in class.
Ethics - when people use harmful methods to get conclusions and then a comity is needed to make sure ethical standards are maintained in research practices to protect subjects and ensure integrity in the data collection process.
9/16
Material culture - the physical objects, resources, and spaces that people use to define their culture. This encompasses everything from art and architecture to clothing and tools, reflecting the values, beliefs, and social norms of a society.
Ann Swindler - cultures gives you tools for how to handle a social situation and these cultural frameworks shape individual actions and societal expectations, helping to navigate interpersonal relationships effectively.
Cultural Capital - accumulating cultural knowledge withing a society that confers power and status
Pierre Bourdieu: A key theorist who introduced the concepts of cultural capital and social capital, emphasizing how these forms of capital influence one's ability to navigate social spaces and gain access to resources.
what do you need to know to be able to interact with a friend group? there are things that we like to talk about and things that we don’t really care about. ex: my friends like theater and media, we don’t care for sports
Cultural appropriation - the adoption of something from a culture and erasing its original meaning or significance, often without understanding or respecting its cultural context.
Subculture - a group within a larger culture that has its own distinct values, beliefs, and practices, often formed around shared interests or identities that differ from the mainstream.
Counterculture - a subgroup that rejects the over arching values and norms of the larger culture, often seeking to create alternative lifestyles or ideologies that challenge mainstream perspectives.
Cultural assimilation - the process by which individuals or groups from one culture adopt the customs and beliefs of another culture, often resulting in a loss of their original cultural identity.
Multiculturalism - the coexistence of diverse cultures in a society, where various cultural identities and practices are recognized, valued, and encouraged, promoting inclusivity and mutual respect among different groups.
Ethnocentrism - is the belief in the superiority of one's own ethnic group or culture, often leading to prejudice and discrimination against people from other cultures.
Cultural relativism - is the principle of understanding and evaluating cultural practices and beliefs within their own context, rather than judging them by the standards of another culture.