LESSON 01: Sociological Imagination

History and Biography

The Sociological Imagination enables its processor to understand the larger historical scene in terms of its meaning for the inner life and the external career of a variety of individuals. 

•  The idea that the individual can understand his own experience and gauge his own fate only by locating himself within his period, that he can know his own chances in life only by becoming aware of those of all individuals in his circumstances.

• It is the most fruitful form of this self-consciousness. 

• The most fruitful distinction with which the sociological imagination works is between ‘the personal troubles of milieu’ and ‘the public issues of social structure’.

Troubles and Issues

Troubles = Personal Challenges

Issues = Larger Social Challenges

What are the major issues for publics and key troubles of private individuals in our time? 

To formulate issues and troubles, we must ask what values are cherished yet threatened, and what values are cherished and supported, by characterizing trends of our period. 

• When people cherish some set of values and do not feel any threat to them, they experience well-being. 

• When they cherish values but do feel them to be threatened, they experience a crisis 

• People neither aware of any cherished values nor experience any threat, that is the experience of indifference.

• People unaware of any cherished values, but still are very much aware of threat, that is experience of uneasiness. 

  Sociological Imagination will allow you to locate your displacement in the society, open your self-consciousness with a quality of mind and to examine yourself. Allow you to look outside the box, with a bigger picture in your hand. Seeing the general in the particular and seeing the strange in the familiar.

LESSON 02: Historical Background of the Social Sciences: The Birth and Growth of the Social Sciences

Social Science - Any of various disciplines that study human society and social relationships, including sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics, political science, and history.

Society - A group of people who share a culture and a territory.

Culture

• Is the language, beliefs, values, norms, behaviors, and even material objects that are passed from one generation to the next (Henslin, 2006).

• Culture consists of the abstract values, beliefs, and perceptions of the world that lie    behind people’s behavior and that are reflected by their behavior (Haviland, 1999)

Politics

• Ideas and activities relating to gaining and using power in a country.

• Striving for a share of power or for influence on the distribution of power, whether it be between states or between groups of people within a single state.

The Historical background of the growth of Social Sciences

• Before the birth of modern social sciences in the West, the study of society, culture, and politics were based on social and political philosophy (Scott 2006, p. 9)(cited Lanuza, p.3)

• The Sciences are based on empirical data, tested theories, and carefully contrived observations. Science seeks to discover the truth about specific causes of events and happenings in the natural world.

• After the French Revolution (the breakdown of the Church and religious power), the sciences grew steadily and rapidly to become the most widely accepted way of explaining the world, nature, and human beings.

The Growth of Social Sciences

• The Scientific Revolution, which begun with Nicolaus Copernicus, refers to historical changes in thought and belief, to changes in social and institutional organization, that unfolded in Europe.

• With the coming of the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Reason, nature was to be controlled. “Bound into service and made slave”(Capra 1982, p.56)(cited Lanuza 2016, p.4)

The Dissolution of Feudal Social

Relations

• The factory system and the unprecedented growth in the urban centers due to trade and commerce, attracted a lot of agricultural workers and mass of rural population to migrate to urban centers.

• This created the modern cities.

• As capitalism replaced agricultural economy, people began to see their relationships with other as mere economic transactions rather that as a form of personal relationships.

The Rise of Individualism

• The introduction of money reduction people to deal with people in an impersonal manner. Money made possible the reduction of human interactions to mere business-like transactions devoid of any warmth and personal touch.

• Individualism is simply the recognition of the power of the individual to assert ones freedom against the given norms and structures of society.

The Birth of Social Sciences as

Response to the turmoil of the Modern Period

Sociology

is branch of the social sciences that deals with the scientific study of human interactions, social groups and social institutions, whole societies, and human world as such (Lanuza 2016, p. 7)

• Auguste Comte (1798-1857) – Father of Sociology, he coined the term “Sociology”

3 stages in the development of societies

- theological stage (Fictitious)

- metaphysical stage (Abstract)

- positive stage (Scientific)

Positivism or the school of thought that says that science and its method is the only valid way of knowing things.

People behind Sociology

• Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) – founding

mother of sociology, an English writer and reformist, she is also ethnographer.

• Karl Marx (1818-1883) – father of scientific socialism.

• Emile Durkheim (1858- 1917) – French sociologist. Responsible for defending sociology as an independent discipline from psychology.

• Max Weber (1864-1920) – German sociologist, the pioneer of Interpretive sociology. Weber learned that the greatest application of scientific way of life is in bureaucracy.

Max Weber, a German scientist, defines bureaucracy as a highly structured, formalized, and also an impersonal organization. He also instituted the belief that an organization must have a defined hierarchical structure and clear rules, regulations, and lines of authority which govern it.

Anthropology

• is a scientific discipline originated from social philosophy and travelogues of Western travelers.

• the study of humankind everywhere, throughout time, seeks to produce reliable knowledge about people and their behavior, both about what makes them different and what they all share in common (Haviland, 1999).

• emerged as a distinct branch of scholarship around the middle of the nineteenth century, when public interest in human evolution took hold (Lanuza 2016, p 10).

People behind Anthropology

• Franz Boas (1858-1942) – considered as the father of modern American anthropology

Historical Particularism states that each society is considered as having a unique form of culture that cannot be subsumed under an overall definition of general culture.

• Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski (1884-1942) – an anthropologist and ethnographer.

participant observation a method of social science research that requires to have the ability to participate and blend with the way of life of a given group of people.

• Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown (1881- 1955) - an English social anthropologist who developed the theory of structural functionalism.

Structural-functionalist paradigm, the basic unit of analysis for anthropology and social sciences are the social structures and the functions they perform to maintain the equilibrium of society.

Political Science

•  Is part of the social sciences that deals with the study of politics, power and government.

• politics the process of making collective decisions in a community, society, or group through the application of influence and power (Enthridge and Handelman 2010, p8)(cited in Lanuza 2016, p11).

• Pluralism viewed as being composed of several competing groups with different interests that generate conflicts.

Indigenization of Social Sciences in the

Philippines

In the Philippines, social sciences after World War II simply perpetuated colonial knowledge production from American social sciences.

Virgilio Enriquez

Zeus Salazar

Prospero Covar

Reflexivity 

• or the awareness of the social scientists of the ideological, political, and social biases of their standpoints when doing research and publishing their works for the wider public.

Social Sciences

• today have drastically changed from being western oriented-centered to having a more pluralistic orientation and being multicultural in nature (Lanuza 2016,p 17).

LESSON 03: Doing Social Science Research

• What is research? - Based on Oxford dictionary, it is “the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions”

• Positivism or the School of thought in which scientific method is the only valid way to know things

• How? Through Research.

Basic Steps of Doing Research

+Select a topic – it should be specific.

+Defining a problem – clear problem and direct to the point

+Review of related literature

+Formulate your hypothesis – it should be from your research problem

I.V. - education (cause to change/cause)

D.V. - income (changeable/effect)

+Choosing a research method

• Survey

a.) Questionnaire

b.) Interview

• Existing Data

a.) Secondary Analysis

b.) Content Analysis

• Field Research

a.) Ethnography

b.) Participant Observation

• Experiment

a.) Experimental Group/

Control Group

b.) Controlled Experiment

+Collect your data

+Analyzing it

+And sharing results and recommendation.