Jan.
Chapter 1
A. What is Sociology?
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The study of society
Society is a useless, conceptual term in the study of sociology
The study of human social relations, human interactions
When two or more people are gathered together, their actions can be considered a
study from a sociological perspective
Go beyond what we observe through common sense or common phrase
Getting beneath what we think we see
Attempt to use scientific method to understand and explain human interactions
Why are you a student?
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Personal choice
Family/Friends
Life chances – opportunities a person has given their life circumstances/life chances
Societal norms – society’s expectations of how you’ll behave
To what degree are you you?
Where do people begin and where does society end?
To what degree are you free to choose?
Sociologists study interconnections between society – macrolevel – broader social forces e.g.
life chances, norms, social institutions
Sociologists study interconnections between society – microlevel – individual experiences and
personal choices
Sociological Imagination
C. Wright Mills (1916-1962)
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Talks about biography (micro) and history (macro)
For the purposes of both thinking and doing
“to eliminate society war, poverty, crime … [we must] establish reliable knowledge on
the basis of which to act”
Why did eating lunch at school become normative?
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Normative – the process of becoming normal or normalized
Mid 1990’s – discovered that 1/6 children were going to school hungry
There was concern because hungry children don’t learn, introduced lunch programs
1993 – liberals elected, immediate cutbacks to all social services, massive loss of jobs
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1/7 Canadians can’t make it to the end of the month with the money they have for food
Sociology is the
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Systematic study of society
Goal is objectivity
o by searching for patterns of behavior
o unbiased, try not to skew the research
B. Origins of Sociology
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Precursors – e.g. Ibn Khaldun (1332 – 1406)
o Realized that once social groups reach a level of social security, we begin to
change the way we cooperate with others
o Once these hierarchies emerge, the people with power will use that power to
subordinate to maintain the poverty of others
French Revolution (1789 – 1799) and Enlightenment
o Emphasis on…
 Reason
 Equality – emergent idea that we’re all equal under the law, all beings are
equal
 Progress – very problematic, gives the idea society is progressive or
progressing, progress is defined by your own terms, moral component to
it, can’t moralize if you do research.
o Natural order, divine right of kings, divine right to rule
Auguste Comte (1798-1857): coined the term sociology
o Emerges from philosophy, economics, history, psychology, and law
o Science can be used to understand society and social change
o Said we can apply this to society
“society is greater than the sum of its parts” – people act differently when they’re in
groups
o Social relations
 Cannot be reduced to an individual – an individual is not a representative
of society
 Are a ‘complex web of interconnectedness’
th
20 century
o Distinct disciplinary boundaries – the idea that boundaries between disciplines
are distinct
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21 century
o Post-disciplinary – the idea that boundaries between disciplines is blurring
o Interdisciplinary – scholars work across disciplinary boundaries and cooperating
to do research
C. Your sociological toolkit
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Sociological imagination toolkit (C. Write Mills)
o Empirical research methods
 Reliable (scientific) knowledge
 Needed to understand social relations
 Direct observation – verifiable knowledge
 More in chapter 2
o Sociological theorizing
 Theory…
 Set of propositions intended to explain a fact or phenomenon
 Theories are like world views, each one of us has one, organizes
the way you see the world
 Need theories to observe the world
 Defines what something looks like so you can go out and see what
it looks like and prove it (preconceived idea)
 The framework of which you begin to observe and carry out your
imperial work
 theories are the best explanations of something at the time
 three approaches
 Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)
o Positivist Approach
o Scientific method to study society
o Positivism is the study that the methods of natural science
and applying that to society
o “Laws” – there were universal laws governing society
o Social facts – thought there were rational universal
processes that organized society in a universal way
o Statistical modelling – you can model social phenomenon
through statistics
 Max Weber (1864-1920)
o Interpretive approach
o Lack of context in positivism
o Durkheim counted suicides in Paris, the problem was
protestants committed suicide more than Catholics,
Catholics were less likely to commit suicide because of
their religious indoctrination, religion played a key role in
suicide and statistically modelled that. Problem was that
he used a religious base. Problem with statistical modelling
and positivism – how to create categories which are
useful.
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o Empathetic understanding – talk to people, not just count
 German word - Verstehen
o Understanding self and others in context
o Understanding how individuals develop in social context
o How do you understand yourself?
o Pushback of the positivistic approach, which lacks context
Michael Foucault (1926-1984) and Karl Marx (1813-1883)
o Critical Approach
o Studying power and relations of power
o How is power working in our lives?
o Karl Marx – most people don’t read him, focused on social
institutional ways
o Power is the ability to get you to do something you don’t
want to do – Weber – exercise of power
o Foucault – power isn’t institutional external force,
manifesting the beings you already are, creating you. More
subtle level in society
o Marginalization – emancipation, freedom of
marginalization, idea that you can be freed, become
democratic, open up the possibility of choice.
o Possibilities of emancipation and freedom - Marx was very
interested in this idea
Core Theoretical Frameworks
o Theories are like worldviews, also a perspective
o These perspectives are like the OS on your computer,
theories are like apps. OS will constrain or able the ability
to use the apps that are available to the computer. OS
lurks in the background, works in particular kinds of ways.
o Functionalist perspective (positivist)
 Comes out of the 19th century ideas of science and
the use of statistical modelling
 Pyramidal structure, suggests a hierarchy
 Avoids the notion of hierarchy
 How does a stack of tin cans maintain its balance?
– introduces the idea of interdependence, the
whole of society is the stack, individual can is an
individual in society, complete interdependence,
everyone is contributing to the whole in some
meaningful way
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Problem with this thinking – cans are faceless, no
uniqueness, as long as there is a functional
relationship between two entities, the whole thing
stays intact, everyone performs their role and
society will be stable
Assumptions of this positivistic approach
Assumption is an underlying idea we don’t think
about
 Society is like a living organism (Durkheim
thought human society was like an
organism, achieve homeostasis) as long as
we play our role, the cell will achieve
homeostasis, does not care about fairness
 Society is a stable, orderly system organized
around societal consensus about shared
norms/values (does not consider the
individual)
 Society functions when people play their
assigned role (therefore, doesn’t study
power) (big problem – who’s ideals matter)
Five Traditional Institutions (does not consider
individuals)
 Economy
 Family
 Politics
 Education
 Religion
Important Newer Institutions
 Science and technology
 Mass media
 Sport
 Military
 Medicine – way you manage and control or
regulate a population is through medicine,
fear of death
These structures serve important functions to keep
society running smoothly (as we play our roles in
society, each role has its own manifest and latent
function)
 Manifest
 Latent (hidden functions)
 Dysfunction
o Conflict perspective (critical)
 Engaged in struggle, constant struggle to access
society’s resource
 Assumptions of this critical approach
 Society characterized by social inequality
 Social life is a continuous power struggle for
control of resources (not always about
violence)
 Social arrangements benefit some at the
expense of others (what are the reasons
some have access to resources, and some
don’t (race, sex, gender))
 Marx
 Competition, (societies are organized
around modalities)
 Modes of production, societies have to
organize through some modality(manifests
in the practices of society) to distribute
goods through different ways (for
capitalism it is money, struggle between
those that pay the wages and those that are
looking for wages)
 Bourgeoisie (powerful) vs. proletariat (less
powerful) (engaged in constant struggle)
 Gap between haves and have not in society is
growing
o Interactionist perspective (interpretive)
 Only micro-perspective
 Social psychology (how do you give yourself
meaning)
 Interpretive approach
o “Significant others”
o “Generalized other”
 Assumes
 All behaviors are learned – socialization (we
do not have inherent beliefs or behaviors,
what we believe is what we learn)
 Society is just the sum of these interactions
(different approach and look at individual
psychology)
o Feminist perspective (critical)
 Feminism is represented not only by academic
theories but also social and political activism (adds
a moral component)
 Assumes that
 Gender is a necessary category to explain
inequalities (you cannot understand society
without referring to gender)
 Beliefs about gender and sex are socially
created (what’s the relationship between
biology and those things)
 Which results in the belief that men and
women should be treated as equals
o Postmodern perspective (critical)
 Post WW2 era phenomenon
 Transitions from manufacturing products to
producing ideas and images(describes developed
countries, not the entire world) (quite limited)
 So-called knowledge society (moved out of typical
manufacturing jobs)
 Institutionalized science (narrow view,
suggested Postmodernism is an economic
tool)
 Problems? – What transition will
characterize the next
 Transition led to thinking of things in two
ways
o Skeptical – social change created
conditions of chaos and
meaninglessness (rapid and chaotic,
worries about the future, increasing
chaos) (high schools students
graduating are less hopeful and
more fearful of the future)
o Affirmative – overarching
theories/worldviews cannot explain
society; therefore, crisis in “what we
can know” (crisis in developed
countries in last 50 years, failure to
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solve large social problems is being
questioned)
Contemporary distinctions
Postmodernism
 A historical period (skeptical)
 A form called skeptical form (call Postmodernism)
Poststructuralism
 ‘knowing’ is in crisis (affirmative)
 Studies discourses and elite discourses
(discourses are ways of thinking) (allow us
to communicate with one
another)(organizing ideas, beliefs, attitudes
and practices we use one on one hand and
allow us to interact on the other)(elite
discourses – numbers, if the majority
believe or a number believes in a discourse,
which turns into an elite discourse because
many people believe in it)
Postmodernist Assumes
 Rejection or ‘metanarratives’
o ‘totalizing’ explanations used to
justify a specific point of view or set
of power arrangements that as
presented as “true” and should not
be challenged (used to assert
power)
 Religion, science,
nationalism, economies
 Because they can no longer
explain reality; there is a
crisis of beliefs, knowledge,
and political-social action
Chapter 2
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Why Sociological research is important
The sociological research process
The importance of ethics in research
Qualitative and qualitative research
Sociological research methods (up to the end of page 34)
(A) Why sociological research is important
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“commonsense”(like a map we use to navigate daily life, is and often wrong in a
scientific sense) vs “scientific” knowledge (to get beyond commonsense, commonsense
often fails us)
“scientific” knowledge uses empirical knowledge
Sociology is a “social science” (self-critical,
Sociological Reasoning
Combines empirical methods with theory
o Concept = abstract idea (e.g. “social class”)
o Variable = categorical concept (e.g. “single” is one of the categories in the
variable “marital status”)