Fourth Edition
ANTHONY GIDDENS ● MITCHELL DUNEIER ● RICHARD P.APPELBAUM ● DEBORAH CARR
Chapter 1: Sociology: Theory and Method
Bullying as Social Phenomenon
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What Is Sociology?
• Sociology is the scientific study of human
social life, groups, and societies.
• Sociology shows us that aspects of life we
consider natural or take for granted are
influenced by social and historical forces.
• Sociology is a discipline that insists on
studying people within their social context.
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The Sociological Imagination
• C. Wright Mills (1959) coined this phrase,
which explained the need to move from
away from viewing problems as personal
troubles and toward recognizing them as
public issues.
• An important part of learning to think
sociologically is to gain and utilize the
sociological imagination.
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Social Structure
• Goal of sociology: to understand the
connections between what society makes of
us and what we make of ourselves.
• What we do both gives shape to and is
shaped by society. That is, we structure
society and at the same time are structured
by society.
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Social Structure
• Our lives are structured, or patterned, in
particular, non-random, ways.
• Social structures are dynamic. Societies
are always in the process of structuration,
which means they are constantly being
affected by human actions.
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A Global Perspective
• As sociologists, we must now be global
observers.
• Globalization affects all of us every day,
both as individuals and as members of
nation-states, economic markets, and
more.
• A global view offers insight into
worldwide connections, as well as a point
of comparison.
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Social Change
• Sociology was born during the upheaval that
accompanied industrialization in Western
Europe.
• Many early social thinkers dedicated their
research to better understanding the massive
social change they witnessed.
• The discipline developed with an eye toward
understanding history and change.
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Social Change Today
• Social change continues: for most of human
history, the vast majority of people lived in
small, isolated groups. By 2050, nearly 70
percent of all people will live in urban
settings.
• The development of technology and
communications capabilities continue to
alter the way humans live.
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Social Theory
• Social theories do not intend to explain what is
happening but why it happens.
• There are many theoretical approaches in
sociology: sociologists do not all agree on any
given topic, but theories must be based on facts.
• Research and theory cannot, and should not, be
separate enterprises.
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Early Theorists
• Auguste Comte
– French philosopher who is credited with
giving the discipline its name.
– Believed in creating a science of the social
world to be used for improving people’s lives.
– Saw sociology as the “last science” to be
developed.
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Auguste Comte (1798–1857)
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Early Theorists
• Émile Durkheim
– Drawing on Comte’s notion of sociology as a
science, Durkheim set out to study social
facts. These are those aspects of social life—
for example, religion, the economy—that
shape individual action.
– He saw society as a body that needed all its
parts to function in harmony.
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Émile Durkheim (1858–1917)
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Early Theorists
• Émile Durkheim
– Was interested in what societies needed to
function smoothly.
– Studied social constraint, social isolation, and
anomie (normlessness) in relation to social
change and human behaviors such as suicide.
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Early Theorists
• Karl Marx
– In seeking to explain social change Marx
looked primarily to the economy.
– Developed what is called a materialist
conception of history, whereby the economy,
and not values, culture, or ideas, drives social
change.
– Focused primarily on the ills of capitalism and
its class system.
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Karl Marx (1818–1883)
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Early Theorists
• Karl Marx
– Predicted that ultimately the class conflict built
in to the capitalist system would lead to its
demise and that a new, classless society would
emerge.
– Marx’s ideas have had a great deal of
influence, both within sociology and in world
political history.
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Early Theorists
• Max Weber
– Though he, too, was interested in explaining
social change, Weber saw power not only in
the economy but also in ideas and values.
– In particular ,Weber argued that Christianity,
in the form of the Protestant work ethic,
played an important role in the development of
capitalism.
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Max Weber (1864–1920)
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Early Theorists
• Max Weber
– Was also interested in the increasing
rationality of the social world and studied the
structure of bureaucracies.
– Studied many other aspects of social life,
including religion, law, and power, and was
always attuned to the ways people make
meaning out of life.
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Neglected Founders
• Harriet Martineau was a scholar and
activist who introduced sociology to
England. Among other things, she
insisted on the significance of studying
domestic life to better understand a
society.
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Neglected Founders
• W. E. B. Du Bois was the first significant
African American sociologist.
– Key conceptual contributions: double
consciousness and the color line
– Du Bois was a founding member of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP).
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Contemporary Theory
• Symbolic Interactionism
– All social interaction involves an exchange
of information via symbols.
– This exchange may be through language, but
may also be nonverbal or may be conveyed
by setting.
– We learn about ourselves and the world
through this meaningful interaction.
– Key figure: George Herbert Mead
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Contemporary Theory
• Functionalism
– This perspective is derived from Comte and
Durkheim and emphasizes large-scale social
institutions and processes.
– Functionalist approaches focus on understanding
the role or contribution of some event, activity,
or institution to the workings of society as a
whole.
– Modern figures: Talcott Parsons, Robert K.
Merton
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Contemporary Theory
• Marxism
– Those working under this approach derive their
approach from Marx, most significantly as
regards concerns about power, conflict, and
ideology.
– This perspective is most commonly applied to
capitalism and economic systems.
– Marxist thinkers tend to take on an activist
stance in addition to a scholarly one.
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Contemporary Theory
• Feminist theory begins from the perspective
that women’s lives and experiences have largely
been ignored and must be brought to the
forefront of sociological thinking.
• Postmodern theory takes the position that
social life is not based on any kind of linear
history, but is rather always in flux. The media is
often seen as a key player in how people
understand their lives.
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Levels of Analysis – Microsociology
• Microsociology is the study of everyday,
face-to-face interaction. Symbolic
interactionists study primarily at this level
of analysis.
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Levels of Analysis – Macrosociology
• Macrosociology is the analysis of large
social systems and institutions.
Functionalists and Marxists fall largely
under this heading.
• In practice, these two levels of analysis
work best when applied in concert.
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Research Methods: Questions
• Sociology, as a social science, must take an
empirical approach to answering questions
about the world.
• Sociologists ask four primary types of
questions: factual, comparative,
developmental, and theoretical.
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Activity: Writing Sociological Questions
Table 1.2 A Sociologist’s Line of Questioning
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Research Methods: Seven Steps
1. Define the research problem.
2. Review the evidence—do a literature review.
3. Make the problem precise—specify your
hypothesis.
4. Work out a research design.
5. Carry out the research—collect your data.
6. Interpret the results—analyze your data.
7. Report the findings—publish or present them.
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Research Methods
• Ethnography, or participant observation,
is a method frequently used to study
people in their own settings in a deep,
thorough fashion.
• Surveys are a more structured research
method where specific, carefully
constructed questions are asked to
specific, carefully selected individuals.
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Research Methods
• Sociologists occasionally use
experimental designs when highly
controlled conditions are necessary to
determine causation.
• Comparative and historical sociology are
approaches that allow researchers to
understand variations in social phenomena
across both time and space.
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Research Methods: Ethics
• Because sociologists are dealing with real people
in their everyday lives, we must be very cautious
in our work.
• All research that directly involves human
subjects must first be approved by an
Institutional Review Board (IRB).
• Study participants must give informed consent
prior to agreeing to participate and must be
debriefed afterward.
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How Sociology Affects our Lives
1. Enhances our awareness of cultural
differences and of social structures
2. Improves our ability to assess the
success/failure of public initiatives and
policies
3. Offers us knowledge and enlightenment we
can use to direct our choices
4. Teaches us analytical skills that are important
in many future careers
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This concludes the Lecture
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Chapter 1: Sociology: Theory and Method
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Clicker Questions
1. What is sociology?
•
•
•
•
a. Sociology is the study of individuals.
b. Sociology is the study of personality, cognition, emotion, and motivation.
c. Sociology is the study of human social life, groups, and societies.
d. Sociology is the study of the Social Reform movement.
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Clicker Questions
2. What is the sociological imagination?
a. It is the ability to “think ourselves away” from the familiar routines of our daily
lives in order to look at them anew.
b. It is the study of the way private troubles aggregate into public issues.
c. It is the worldview of Karl Marx.
d. It is the application of Liberal and Socialist political values to social scientific
inquiry.
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Clicker Questions
3. The social contexts of our lives consist of more than just random assortments
of actions or events; there are regularities in the ways we behave and in the
relationships we have with one another. This patterned nature of social contexts
is what sociologists refer to as which one of the following?
a. structuration
b. functionalism
c. macrosociology
d. social structure
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Clicker Questions
4. What is microsociology?
a. the study of the internal dynamics of individual consciousness
b. the study of face-to-face interaction in everyday life
c. the study of children in social life
d. another name for the sociology of computing
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Clicker Questions
5. Sociology can be considered a science because it does which of the
following?
a. It uses systematic methods of empirical investigation to study a phenomenon.
b. It uses haphazard methods of theoretical thinking.
c. It involves the making of recommendations to policy makers.
d. It is conducted by people with advanced professional degrees wearing white
lab coats.
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Clicker Questions
6. Which of the following best reflects the definition of ethnography?
a. the study of ethnicity, race, and urban social relations in multicultural contexts
b. questions that relate to the knowledge produced when sociologists link a
current phenomenon to historical forces
c. the study of something with a historical basis (e.g., the Russian Revolution)
and involving the analysis of documentary sources such as government
statistics, newspapers, and so on, to explain a type of human behavior during a
certain time in history
d. a way of studying people firsthand using participant observation or interviewing
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Clicker Questions
7. What role do theoretical questions play in sociological research?
a. They gather factual information and observations.
b. They seek to explain specific observations.
c. They make moral judgments about the collected facts.
d. They draw comparisons between societies.
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