LECTURE ONE
I. WHAT IS SOCIOLOGY?
DEFINITION: "SOCIOLOGY IS THE SYSTEMATIC STUDY OF SOCIAL AND
HUMAN GROUPS. IT FOCUSES PRIMARILY ON THE INFLUENCE
OF SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS on people's attitudes and how societies
ARE ESTABLISHED AND CHANGE. (Examples: Street gangs, schools,
fraternities)
IT REQUIRES A SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION, WHICH "IS AN AWARNESS OF THE
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN AN INDIVIDUAL AND THE WIDER SOCIETY. IT'S THE
ABILITY TO SEE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN OUR PERSONAL, IMMEDIATE WORLD AND
THE BROADER SOCIAL WORLD AROUND US.
Why study it?
--clarifies our thinking and moves us from opinion to analysis
--gives us facts to work with
--makes the familiar strange and the strange familiar
What is our goal?
We want to develop what C. Wright Mills called THE SOCIOLOGICAL
IMAGINATION: "The ability to see the relationship between
individual experiences and the larger society"
The sociological imagination present empowering tool that allows us to
look beyond a limited understanding of things to see the world and its
people in a new way. It may be as simple as understanding why roommates
from Tennessee prefers country music to hip-hop, or it may open up a whole
different way of understanding whole populations in the world, such as the
terrorist attacks after Sept. 11.
we do this by something called science.
WE DO THIS (as we'll learn in Chapter 3) BY:
A) OBSERVATION
B) INTERPRETATION
C) IMAGINATION
D) ARTICULATION/DISCUSSION
IN STUDYING OUR SOCIAL WORLD, WE WANT TO
A) SUSPEND OUR IMMEDIATED BIASES AND VALUES
(GIVE EXAMPLES)
B) TRY TO VIEW OUR SOCIETY AS AN OUTSIDER
c) SEE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN OUR LOCALITY AND GLOBAL CONNECTIONS
II. IS SOCIOLOGY A SCIENCE?
A. SUMMARIZE DEBATES
1. "SOFT" VS. "HARD"
2. "EASY"
3. COMMONSENSE/USELESS
B. WHY IS IT A SCIENCE? (STRESS THAT IT IS!!)
1. SYSTEMATIC
2. OBSERVABLE
3. VERIFIABLE (TESTABLE)
4. REPLICATION (REPEAT TESTS)
5. LOGICAL (MORE ON THIS LATER)
6. USEFUL
C. TYPES OF ANALYSIS:
1. LEVELS OF ANALYSIS
A. MACROSOCIOLOGY: LOOKS AT STRUCTURE, BROAD TOPICS
B. MICROSOCIOLOGY: LOOKS AT SMALL GROUPS/INDIVIDUAL
2. TWO OTHER DISTINCTIONS:
A) BASIC (GENERAL RESEARCH, "TRUTH")
B) APPLIED (FOR A SPECIFIC APPLICATION)
BEHAVIOR
III. WHERE DOES SOCIOLOGY COME FROM?
V. THEORIES (HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS):
DEF OF THEORY: FROM TEXT: "A SET OF STATEMENTS THAT SEEMS TO
EXPLALIN PROBLEMS, ACTIONS, OR BEHAVIOR"
(GIVE MY OWN AS: A WELL-FORMULATED SET OF STATEMENTS,
INCLUDING SOME LAW-LIKE GENERALIZATIONS THAT ARE EMPIRICALLY TESTABLE.
OR: A STORY. A MYTH. A WAY TO MAKE SOMETHING MYSTERIOUS LESS-SO.
WE USE CONCEPTS:
DEFINTION OF CONCEPT: CATEGORIES OF PERCEPTS
SOME IMPORTANT THEORISTS THAT HAVE SHAPED SOCIOLOGY:
A. DURKHEIM (1858-1917):
EMILE DURKHEIM, CONSIDERED "FATHER" OF SOCIOLOGY. CONTRIBU
1. FIRST TO EXAMINE SPECIFICALLY "SOCIOLOGICAL" TOPICS
2. TREAT SOCIAL FACTS AS THINGS
3. STUDY OF SUICIDE (EXPLAIN THIS):
TYPES:
A) ALTRUISTIC
B) ANOMIC
C) FATALISTIC
D) EGOISTIC
HE PUT THESE INTO A THEORY (CONSIDERED THE FIRST SPECIFICALLY
SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY) CALLED ANOMIE THEORY: (EXPLAIN
NORMLESSNESS--WHEN SOCIAL GLUE BREAKS DOWN, PEOPLE
TO KILL THEMSELVES.
B. MARX (1818-1883): (SUMMARIZE HIS THEORY)
Theory of Classes
For Marx, people put society together and create and
appropriate social arrangements that allow us to interact,
exchange commodities, and create systems of control. The
key concept here is PRODUCTIVE RELATIONS. These include:
a) What resources exist
b) How we produce things (tools, etc)
c) Social relations (how we are oranized in society)
d) Culture (expectations, shared values, language, law, etc)
The first two are called MEANS OF PRODUCTION, and the second
two MODE OF PRODUCTION.
Marx notes that some people control and benefit,and are also
more-able todominate thedistribution of goods and resources and
privileges. These are CLASSES, and represent a STRUCTURAL
variable rather than, as for Weber, for example, a social or
economic status (SES).
C. WEBER (1864: 1920):
Max Weber was an important early theorist, who developed a theory called
VERSTEHEN. this simply means that we tried to understand to fully
comprehend behavior. We must learn the subjective meanings that people
attached to their actions and how they themselves explain their behavior.
For example:
suppose that we study the social rankings of individuals in a fraternity.
They have a status structure. As scholars we might examine the effects
of athleticism, were grades, or social skills, or seniority, one status
within the fraternity.
We also owe Weber credit for key concepts called an ideal type. And IDEAL
TYPE is a construct, and made up model, that serves as a measuring rod
against which actual cases can be evaluated.
an ideal type simply gives us the most common and most essential qualities
in something that allow us to compare this ideal set of qualities with
something that actually exists and the real world.
SOME KEY POINTS:
1. IDEAL TYPES (CONCEPTUAL MEASURING RODS)
2. VERSTEHEN (EXPLAIN HOW THIS DIFFERS FROM DURKHEIM)
3. TOPICS: POWER, ORGANIZATION, BUREAUCRACY, RELIGION
AND CHANGE
4. EXAMPLE: PROTESTANT ETHIC/SPIRIT OF CAPITALISM
D. MEAD:
SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONIST/CHICAGO SCHOOL
HOW HAVE THESE THEORIES BEEN INTEGRATED INTO CURRENT SOCIOLOGY?
A. CONFLICT THEORY (EXPLAIN)
Unlike the functionalist (or "consensus") view of society, which views
HARMONY as the basis of order, conflict theorists see CONFLICT as the
NATURAL state of social existence.
Chambliss and Seidman have summarized conflict theory in four
propositions:
1. Society at every moment is subject to change; social change is
continuous.
2. Every society experiences at every moment social conflicts.
3. Every element in a society contributes to change.
4. Every society rests upon constraint of some members by others.
The research task for conflict theorists is essentially one of
political analysis.
Unlike symbolic interactionist perspectives, which focus on how the
SUBJECT of knowledge creates a world built up from meanings and
competent interpretations of those meanings, or the Marxist
(dialectical) paradigm which sees the social world as a dialectical
outcome of objective and subjective factors, conflict theory tends to
focus on the OBJECT of knowledge, and social factors such as special
interests, power, or status become "INDEPENDENT VARIABLES."
Conflict theorists, despite their critical examination of power
relations, tend to accept the fundamental existing social
arrangements, and instead of arguing for NEW SOCIAL SYSTEMS tend to
argue for rearrangement of existing relations.
B. FUNCTIONALISM (PARSONS AND MERTON)
KEY POINTS:
1. BIOTIC METAPHOR (SOCIETY AS AN ORGANISM)
2. EVERYTHING HAS A "PURPOSE" OR IT WOULDN'T EXIST
3. ALL ORGANISMS (INCLUDING SOCIETY) HAVE THE FOLLOWING
FUNCTIONS (GOAL ATTAINMENT, ADAPTATION, INTEGRATION, MAINTENANCE
4. TYPES OF FUNCTIONS: MANIFEST/LATENT
Functionalism was influenced by structural anthropologists and
by Emile Durkheim's social theory. Developed in the U.S.
especially in the mid-20th century by Talcott Parsons,
functionalism has several distinct features.
Functionalism adopts a biological metaphor of the social world.
That is, influenced by Durkheim, Parsons argued that we may study
societies AS IF they behaved similar to physiological systems.
For example, a biological organism is examined as an entire
"body," or as a "while," which exists in a particular environment
(i.e., in the larger society of which it is a part). This body
possesses specific mechanisms" which enable the body to adapt to
a changing environment.
Just as a biological organism has built-in regulators which
function to keep the organism healthy and to restore unhealthy
imbalances should they occur, social systems, too, possess
functions which serve to maintain stability (or balance, or
health). This process is called in biological organisms
HOMEOSTASIS, which means, simply, self-correcting. Parsons
contends that ALL social systems, including even the most complex
of societies, must perform all four of the following functions:
1. Adaptation to the environment: (ie, creating mechanisms or
strategies to enable societies or groups to react to changes
which may be disruptive, such as new technology, famine, etc).
2. Goal Attainment, in that societies define goals and strategies
for attaining these goals, and also direct activity to obtain
resources (eg, labor, new forms of social organization) to meet
these goals.
3. Integration is met by coordinating each of the internal parts of
a social system into a smoothly functioning single entity;
4. Maintenance: This means that societies insure that, over time,
the system will be to maintain and perpetuate itself.
A FEW TYPES:
1. MANIFEST FUNCTIONS--OPENLY STATED
2. LATENT FUNCTIONS--COVERT, NOT OBVIOUS
3. DYSFUNCTIONS
GIVE EXAMPLE OF MUSIC: OUR OWN (THE "JUKEBOX" WAR): FUNCTIONALISTS MIGHT
SAY THAT MUSIC FUNCTIONED AS "BOUNDARY SYSTEM" A MEANS TO RESOLVE CONFLICT
CONFLICT MODEL: JUKE BOX WAR COULD BE UNDERSTOOD AS A DEPOSITORY OF
CULTURAL SYMBOLS, ETC
C. INTERACTIONISM
(GIVE EXAMPLE OF SIDEWALK ETIQUETTE FROM BOOK)
EG---SPACE AS NORMATIVE SYSTEM.
POINT---THERE ARE HIDEEN RULES THAT WE A) OBSERVE B) INTERPRET
AND C)SELECT APPROPRIATE RESPONSE
LINK THIS TO DRAMATURGY, IE, "WORLD AS THEATER"
D. POSTMODERNISM: An emerging perspective that examines (and challenges)
the foundations of language, research, and other things we take for
granted. It alerts us to what we DO NOT KNOW rather than tells us what
we know
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