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Intro to Sociology and Sociological Imagination

  • Making the familiar strange

    • Finding ways to improve on old practices

      • Identify flaws and keep what works/has to stay

  • Sociological Competence

    • Is formed from early interactions with people around

    • The “norm” and social behavior

  • Study of human society

    • “Going beyond getting by”

    • Study of external forces that determine human behavior

  • Lack of sociologists in pop culture

    • Absence of books/movie characters

    • People don’t recognize how important/impactful

    • However, addresses important societal problems

      • Racism

      • Vaccine Resistance

      • Education System

      • Wealth Inequality

  • Uses scientific method

    • Has limits, since social behavior cannot be quantified as well as other sciences can

  • Has overlap with other disciplines

    • History and anthropology

      • Particular events/cultures

      • Sociology is more general

    • Psychology and Biology

      • On a micro level and examines internal forces

      • Sociology is more the examination of a larger picture and the effects of external forces

    • Economics

      • Quantitative

      • Sociology can’t always be quantified

    • Political science

      • Focuses on only one aspect of social behavior/dynamic, i.e power

      • Sociology discusses power and how it comes to be but also examines other behavior

  • Why is Sociology unique?

    • Focuses on making comparisons across cases and finding patterns

      • Used to create hypotheses about how society works/has worked

    • Examines how people interact with one another and large groups

  • Parsons:

    • Professor at Harvard

    • Universal theory of Actions

    • Thought human behavior can be reduced to a formula

    • Foundational sociology was written by a conservative man

  • Emile Durkheim:

    • French sociologist

    • Society is sui generis: objective reality that is irreducible to the individuals that compose it

      • Society is greater than the sum of its parts

    • Focus on group and not the individual

    • Text called “suicide”

      • How we can measure the rates of events happening around the world to predict occurrences beyond individual trauma.

      • Shouldn’t care why a person committed suicide or why their life came to an end

      • Rather care about why we see more suicides in a certain group than other

        • However the patterns he suggested (Protestants more likely to commit suicide than Catholics) still hold true

        • Protestant: individual relationship w/ god, Catholic: community relationship w/ god; community relationship keeps people more tethered to their lives

    • Used numbers and data to provide empirical evidence that supports his hypotheses about why the world works the way it works

  • C. Wright Mills

    • Our individual lives are strongly shaped by where, when and to whom we were born

      • Our opportunities and potentials are always influenced by the inequalities and injustice that we encounter (i.e opportunities impacted by factors outside of our control)

        • Different from psychology since it takes into account things you cannot change (i.e circumstances around ones birth)

        • Availability of essential resources (sucha s good nutrition and clean water) early in life can heavily impact future development

    • Coined the term “sociological imagination”

      • Term that connects personal experiences to society at large and to greater historical forces

      • Makes the familiar strange

      • Facilitates a more active and effective participation in  the world around us

  • Sociological imagination in practice

    • Why go to college

      • If you can teach yourself, why pay your professors to do it?

        • Because it provides you access to a variety of resources that you wouldn't have access to otherwise

        • Get a piece of paper which certifies you as an expert

          • Social benefit

    • Challenges basic impulses to see aspects of life as inevitable/natural

    • Provides insight into stereotyping and active discrimination

      • Discrimination

        • Behavior, practice or policy that harms, excludes or disadvantages individuals on the basis of their group membership

        • Cleveland Clinic banning smokers

          • Discrimination vs Legal discrimination

            • Legal: based on race, religion, sex, gender identitity, sexuality,

          • Although they don’t “condone” smoking because it does not match the institutions value, they contribute to a system that supports an unhealthy lifestyle that doesn’t prioritize the well-being of its workers

          • Smoking high among people live in low poverty situations

            • More smoke shops

            • Less education about healthy coping strategies

            • Know its bad, but gives instant gratification and is very difficult to quit

            • Peer influence

          • Smoking isn’t random

            • Follows patterns that coincides with socio-econominc status, race and gender

            • So is the Cleveland Clinic’s policy well intentioned or a de facto (not through legislation) discrimination policy


  • Facilitates more active and effective participation in the world around us

  • False Consciousness

    • Lack of Sociological Imagination and tendency for people to be able to see things/fight situations in which they have less power

      • especially exploitation and oppression

    • Stereotyping vs Discrimination

      • Stereotyping: emotions

      • Discrimination: actions

    • Karl Marx:

      • Why do oppressed people [who have the ability to understand their situation] fail to understand?

    • People who are most oppressed, are the ones who have the least amount of time to think about the fact that they are being oppressed

      • Hence can’t fight against because they know that someone else would be willing to take their spot if they left

    • The ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas

  • American Dream

    • Example of Social Mobility

    • Unattainable for most americans (even those who fit the racial and heteronormative standards)

    • Agency v. Structure

      • Agency: the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices

        • Can choose one’s own path

        • Allows one to navigate the structure

      • Structure: the recurrent patterned arrangements which influence or limit the choices and opportunities available.

        • The path that a person must navigate

          • May not be equal for everyone (marble staircase v broken ladder)

        • The structure of the American Dream and american society makes it prohibitive to certain groups of people

    • American Dream works (or is thought to work) on the foundation of a meritocracy → people who work harder must be on top

      • People working different jobs work different levels of “hard”

        • I.e they have a different structure, and their respective structure may define the “hard work” and the extent of that hard work differently

  • Pierre Bourdieu

    • How are structures reproduced from generation to generation and how is social stability preserved?

      • Habitus refers to the deeply ingrained habits, skills and dispositions we possess due to our life experiences

        • Acquire a sense of one’s place in the world (not create)

        • A “point of view” from which one is able to interpret one’s own actions as well as the actions of others

        • Cultural capital refers to nonmaterial goods such as educational credentials, types of knowledge and expertise, verbal skills, and aesthetic preferences that can be converted into economic capital

          • Our taste

          • Our knowledge of how to handle certain situations

        • How is habitus dangerous?

  • Tree Vs. Forest

    • Individual First

      • Composed of individuals who choose to act instead of experiencing chaos

        • Bad rules >> no rules

      • Micro-model

    • Society First

      • Larger institutions teach individuals the rules and this influences what they do

        • Socialization: process by which people learn the “rules” of a functioning society

        • Alienation (Marx): the dehumanizing sense that one's society is opposed to individual human interest. The separation of a person from what they create.

          • Structure separates us from society by dehumanizing us a s functioning parts

        • Anomie (Durkheim):  Lack of moral regulation or common social rules leading to social isolation and anxiety

          • Lack of ability to assimilate with rules of world/ or cope w/ anxiety that comes from unfamiliar rules can be very disturbing for individuals

      • Pat Sharkey’s Research

        • Violence in neighborhood → lower test scores in children who didn’t know about the violence

          • Environmental changes can have impact on the individual

            • Way people interact with the environment and each other changes, hence causing behavioral changes

    • Agency within Structure

      • Habitual practices are simultaneously a result of social rules and of individual flourishes

        • We normally comply to rules

          • But, we always have the potential to resist

        • The impact of our actions is dependent on the structure around us

    • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

      • Wealthy white woman born in 1860 in the northeast

      • Feminist sociologist

      • Suffered from baby blues or post-partum depression after giving birth

        • Treatment was to lock the her in the room

          • Realized that all her life’s decisions were being made by the men in her life

            • Wondered if things would be better if women were allowed to have input about their own care

      • Was also controversial

        • Racist and Anti-semitic writings

        • Support of eugenics movement

      • Gave rise to feminism but it was only exclusive to rich, white women

        • Could not see the worries of women unlike herself

          • Had a limited sociological imagination


  • WEB Dubois

    • Wanted to go to Harvard

      • First black valedictorian in an all balck school

      • Mother has a stroke

        • Cope and still excels, only to be told he is not Harvard material

    • “I have stepped within the Veil, raising it that you may view faintly its deeper recesses, --the meaning of its religion, the passion of its human sorrow, and the struggle of its greater souls...”

      • By this, Du Bois intends to introduce his readers (WHITE READERS) to the experience of living within the dominant white culture for blacks.

      • He suggests that white people would like to ask him “How does it feel to be a problem?” but usually, he, and other blacks tend to keep this experience to themselves.

    • Double Consciousness

      • The sense that you always need to look at yourself through the eyes of another—measuring your worth by the “contempt and pity” that others within the world view you with

      • Freedom has not really occurred yet for Black men

        • “the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people,--a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a lowly people.

  • Conley’s Definition of culture:

    • A set of beliefs, traditions and practices

    • Culture is everything except nature

      • Not biological, but rather things that are passed down

      • Learned through families and other institutions in society

    • “Being cultured”

      • Accounts for only a few cultures

        • Creates a hierarchy that places certain cultures “better” or “more powerful” than others

      • Giving power to a certain culture

  • Ethnocentrism

    • the sense of taken-for-granted superiority in the context of cultural practices and attitudes

      • the belief that our own culture or group is superior to others

      • the tendency to view all other cultures from the perspective of our own.

Intro to Sociology and Sociological Imagination

  • Making the familiar strange

    • Finding ways to improve on old practices

      • Identify flaws and keep what works/has to stay

  • Sociological Competence

    • Is formed from early interactions with people around

    • The “norm” and social behavior

  • Study of human society

    • “Going beyond getting by”

    • Study of external forces that determine human behavior

  • Lack of sociologists in pop culture

    • Absence of books/movie characters

    • People don’t recognize how important/impactful

    • However, addresses important societal problems

      • Racism

      • Vaccine Resistance

      • Education System

      • Wealth Inequality

  • Uses scientific method

    • Has limits, since social behavior cannot be quantified as well as other sciences can

  • Has overlap with other disciplines

    • History and anthropology

      • Particular events/cultures

      • Sociology is more general

    • Psychology and Biology

      • On a micro level and examines internal forces

      • Sociology is more the examination of a larger picture and the effects of external forces

    • Economics

      • Quantitative

      • Sociology can’t always be quantified

    • Political science

      • Focuses on only one aspect of social behavior/dynamic, i.e power

      • Sociology discusses power and how it comes to be but also examines other behavior

  • Why is Sociology unique?

    • Focuses on making comparisons across cases and finding patterns

      • Used to create hypotheses about how society works/has worked

    • Examines how people interact with one another and large groups

  • Parsons:

    • Professor at Harvard

    • Universal theory of Actions

    • Thought human behavior can be reduced to a formula

    • Foundational sociology was written by a conservative man

  • Emile Durkheim:

    • French sociologist

    • Society is sui generis: objective reality that is irreducible to the individuals that compose it

      • Society is greater than the sum of its parts

    • Focus on group and not the individual

    • Text called “suicide”

      • How we can measure the rates of events happening around the world to predict occurrences beyond individual trauma.

      • Shouldn’t care why a person committed suicide or why their life came to an end

      • Rather care about why we see more suicides in a certain group than other

        • However the patterns he suggested (Protestants more likely to commit suicide than Catholics) still hold true

        • Protestant: individual relationship w/ god, Catholic: community relationship w/ god; community relationship keeps people more tethered to their lives

    • Used numbers and data to provide empirical evidence that supports his hypotheses about why the world works the way it works

  • C. Wright Mills

    • Our individual lives are strongly shaped by where, when and to whom we were born

      • Our opportunities and potentials are always influenced by the inequalities and injustice that we encounter (i.e opportunities impacted by factors outside of our control)

        • Different from psychology since it takes into account things you cannot change (i.e circumstances around ones birth)

        • Availability of essential resources (sucha s good nutrition and clean water) early in life can heavily impact future development

    • Coined the term “sociological imagination”

      • Term that connects personal experiences to society at large and to greater historical forces

      • Makes the familiar strange

      • Facilitates a more active and effective participation in  the world around us

  • Sociological imagination in practice

    • Why go to college

      • If you can teach yourself, why pay your professors to do it?

        • Because it provides you access to a variety of resources that you wouldn't have access to otherwise

        • Get a piece of paper which certifies you as an expert

          • Social benefit

    • Challenges basic impulses to see aspects of life as inevitable/natural

    • Provides insight into stereotyping and active discrimination

      • Discrimination

        • Behavior, practice or policy that harms, excludes or disadvantages individuals on the basis of their group membership

        • Cleveland Clinic banning smokers

          • Discrimination vs Legal discrimination

            • Legal: based on race, religion, sex, gender identitity, sexuality,

          • Although they don’t “condone” smoking because it does not match the institutions value, they contribute to a system that supports an unhealthy lifestyle that doesn’t prioritize the well-being of its workers

          • Smoking high among people live in low poverty situations

            • More smoke shops

            • Less education about healthy coping strategies

            • Know its bad, but gives instant gratification and is very difficult to quit

            • Peer influence

          • Smoking isn’t random

            • Follows patterns that coincides with socio-econominc status, race and gender

            • So is the Cleveland Clinic’s policy well intentioned or a de facto (not through legislation) discrimination policy


  • Facilitates more active and effective participation in the world around us

  • False Consciousness

    • Lack of Sociological Imagination and tendency for people to be able to see things/fight situations in which they have less power

      • especially exploitation and oppression

    • Stereotyping vs Discrimination

      • Stereotyping: emotions

      • Discrimination: actions

    • Karl Marx:

      • Why do oppressed people [who have the ability to understand their situation] fail to understand?

    • People who are most oppressed, are the ones who have the least amount of time to think about the fact that they are being oppressed

      • Hence can’t fight against because they know that someone else would be willing to take their spot if they left

    • The ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas

  • American Dream

    • Example of Social Mobility

    • Unattainable for most americans (even those who fit the racial and heteronormative standards)

    • Agency v. Structure

      • Agency: the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices

        • Can choose one’s own path

        • Allows one to navigate the structure

      • Structure: the recurrent patterned arrangements which influence or limit the choices and opportunities available.

        • The path that a person must navigate

          • May not be equal for everyone (marble staircase v broken ladder)

        • The structure of the American Dream and american society makes it prohibitive to certain groups of people

    • American Dream works (or is thought to work) on the foundation of a meritocracy → people who work harder must be on top

      • People working different jobs work different levels of “hard”

        • I.e they have a different structure, and their respective structure may define the “hard work” and the extent of that hard work differently

  • Pierre Bourdieu

    • How are structures reproduced from generation to generation and how is social stability preserved?

      • Habitus refers to the deeply ingrained habits, skills and dispositions we possess due to our life experiences

        • Acquire a sense of one’s place in the world (not create)

        • A “point of view” from which one is able to interpret one’s own actions as well as the actions of others

        • Cultural capital refers to nonmaterial goods such as educational credentials, types of knowledge and expertise, verbal skills, and aesthetic preferences that can be converted into economic capital

          • Our taste

          • Our knowledge of how to handle certain situations

        • How is habitus dangerous?

  • Tree Vs. Forest

    • Individual First

      • Composed of individuals who choose to act instead of experiencing chaos

        • Bad rules >> no rules

      • Micro-model

    • Society First

      • Larger institutions teach individuals the rules and this influences what they do

        • Socialization: process by which people learn the “rules” of a functioning society

        • Alienation (Marx): the dehumanizing sense that one's society is opposed to individual human interest. The separation of a person from what they create.

          • Structure separates us from society by dehumanizing us a s functioning parts

        • Anomie (Durkheim):  Lack of moral regulation or common social rules leading to social isolation and anxiety

          • Lack of ability to assimilate with rules of world/ or cope w/ anxiety that comes from unfamiliar rules can be very disturbing for individuals

      • Pat Sharkey’s Research

        • Violence in neighborhood → lower test scores in children who didn’t know about the violence

          • Environmental changes can have impact on the individual

            • Way people interact with the environment and each other changes, hence causing behavioral changes

    • Agency within Structure

      • Habitual practices are simultaneously a result of social rules and of individual flourishes

        • We normally comply to rules

          • But, we always have the potential to resist

        • The impact of our actions is dependent on the structure around us

    • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

      • Wealthy white woman born in 1860 in the northeast

      • Feminist sociologist

      • Suffered from baby blues or post-partum depression after giving birth

        • Treatment was to lock the her in the room

          • Realized that all her life’s decisions were being made by the men in her life

            • Wondered if things would be better if women were allowed to have input about their own care

      • Was also controversial

        • Racist and Anti-semitic writings

        • Support of eugenics movement

      • Gave rise to feminism but it was only exclusive to rich, white women

        • Could not see the worries of women unlike herself

          • Had a limited sociological imagination


  • WEB Dubois

    • Wanted to go to Harvard

      • First black valedictorian in an all balck school

      • Mother has a stroke

        • Cope and still excels, only to be told he is not Harvard material

    • “I have stepped within the Veil, raising it that you may view faintly its deeper recesses, --the meaning of its religion, the passion of its human sorrow, and the struggle of its greater souls...”

      • By this, Du Bois intends to introduce his readers (WHITE READERS) to the experience of living within the dominant white culture for blacks.

      • He suggests that white people would like to ask him “How does it feel to be a problem?” but usually, he, and other blacks tend to keep this experience to themselves.

    • Double Consciousness

      • The sense that you always need to look at yourself through the eyes of another—measuring your worth by the “contempt and pity” that others within the world view you with

      • Freedom has not really occurred yet for Black men

        • “the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people,--a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a lowly people.

  • Conley’s Definition of culture:

    • A set of beliefs, traditions and practices

    • Culture is everything except nature

      • Not biological, but rather things that are passed down

      • Learned through families and other institutions in society

    • “Being cultured”

      • Accounts for only a few cultures

        • Creates a hierarchy that places certain cultures “better” or “more powerful” than others

      • Giving power to a certain culture

  • Ethnocentrism

    • the sense of taken-for-granted superiority in the context of cultural practices and attitudes

      • the belief that our own culture or group is superior to others

      • the tendency to view all other cultures from the perspective of our own.