First lecture/activity

 Realize the social forces that shape your choices and behavior
 Understand the impact of failing to comprehend these social forces
 Appreciate the contributions of sociology in undertaking both the self and the group life

 Family
 Peers
 Fashion
 Icons
 Religion
 Education
 Events (identify)

 Manila paper
 Pentel pen
 Masking tape

 Divide the class into 4 or 5 groups
 For each group, choose your leader, rapporteur and secretary
 Distribution of springboard questions
 Each member of the group shares his/her responses to the questions
 The leader guides the flow of the discussion as the secretary jots down important responses

 After everybody has finished sharing their responses, the rapporteur presents the collated answers of the group to the class
 The facilitator(teacher) summarizes the responses of the groups and draws trends in order to come up with appropriate conclusions
 Processing/integration

 What have you discovered about social forces and your choices and decisions?
 Do you understand the dynamics of social conditions and how they affect our social lives?
 Can you identify your behavior, which is a product of interacting social forces?

 Do you feel better now that you have identified the social forces that influenced your behavior?
 Has your discovery lessened or heightened your feelings of helplessness about the prevailing strong social forces?
 Do you now see the value of understanding the sociological perspectives of behavior?

 The moment you wake up in the morning, enumerate the choices, decisions and actions you have which are influenced by people and events around you as well as the roles and duties and demands pressed on you by social conditions.

 How do you feel about being pressured by these conditions? Do you feel happy in carrying out the demands or do you feel irritated or frustrated because you can hardly cope with them?
 How do these social forces jibe with your own choices and decisions?

 No man is an island
 Man is not only a rational and political being.
 Man is basically a gregarious social being!
 The individual is the society, and the society is the individual!

 Definition and nature of sociology
 How can you adequately understand human behavior?
 Look into the relationship of man with other members of the society?
 Who/what is man?
 A biological and rational being
 A social being from the cradle to the grave

 Always in the company of others and never in isolation from birth to death
 Associates and interacts with others in different social settings in order to satisfy his varied needs
 How and why he behaves in a certain way is greatly influenced by the norms, values, ethos, expectations, prescriptions and proscription of the social groups to which he belongs

 The science that deals with the study of society and the social interactions taking place therein.
 It is concerned with the study of human societies and of human behavior in social settings
 As a discipline, it undertakes a scientific study of man’s behavior as a consequence of his being a member of a social group.

 Socius (Latin) = companion or associate
 Logos (Greek) = study
 Thus, sociology is the study of association, group, society and social interaction
 Begins with the idea that humans are to be understood in the context of their social life, that we are social animals influenced by interaction, social patterns and socialization.

 It is neutral. It seeks knowledge for the sake of knowledge. It describes society as it is and not what it ought to be, nor biased, nor one sided. It is ethically neutral and maintains a value-free position.
 It is concerned with the study of human social life.
 It is a science. It utilizes methods and techniques to develop a body of organized, systematized and verifiable knowledge about human societies.

 Social organization: social groups, institutions, stratification and mobility, ethnic relations and bureaucracy
 Social psychology: study of human nature as the outcome of group life, personality formation and collective behavior
 Social change: social organization and disorganization, change in culture and problems

 Human ecology: studies the behavior of a given population and its relationship to the group’s social institutions and natural resources
 Population studies: population size, composition, change, and quality as they influence the economic, political, social systems and vice versa

 Sociological theory and research: discovery, development and replication of research tools that test the applicability of the principles of group life for the regulation of the social environment
 Applied sociology: application and findings of pure sociological research to such various fields as marriage, family, criminology, penology, social work, education and industrial relations.

 Early practitioners:
1.
Henri Saint-Simon(1760-
1825) wrote his ideas on the science of society based on the assumption that the law of human behavior could be determined in the same manner that the law of nature had been arrived at by natural scientist.

2. Auguste Comte (1798-1857) was a French philosopher who advocated the idea of
“positivism” or the use of empirical investigation to understand society and social phenomena.
He coined the word sociology and is considered the father of sociology.

3
. Herbert Spencer (1830-
1903) was a British philosopher-scientist who argued that human societies go through an evolutionary process and who coined the concept of “survival of the fittest.” His theory of social evolution espoused the idea that societies develop from relative homogeneity and simplicity to heterogeneity and complexity
.

4. Karl Marx (1818-1883) a
German philosopher who believed that the misery and exploitation of the working lower classes in society was caused by capitalism –the existing industrial order. That conflict between the two struggling classes will always exist because of inequality.
That the relationship of people is based on economics and its elements: production, distribution, consumption

5. Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) a
French sociologist who focused on characteristics of social groups, particularly that of religion. He advanced his theory with the social methodology on the classic study of suicide as it was influenced by social forces: social integration, religion, marital status and parenthood.

6. Max Weber (1864-1920) a
German economist-lawyer whose works dwelt on the significance of subjective meanings people give to their interactions with others. He pointed out the importance of
“verstehen” – an emphatic understanding of what people are thinking and feeling of the people's subjective experience.