O Lesson 1 - goer. qergqerg PDF

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o Lesson 1:

What is Sociology?

o Three revolutions had to take place before the sociological imagination could crystallize:

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The scientific revolution (16th c.) encouraged the use of evidence to substantiate theories.

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The democratic revolution (18th c.) encouraged the view that human action can change society.

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The industrial revolution (19th c.) gave sociologists their subject matter.

o Sociology

o Sociology is the systematic study of human society and social interaction. It is based on the idea that our relations with other people create opportunities for us to think and act but also set limits on our thoughts and action.

o What is Sociology? Sociology is also the study of reifications, or social constructions.

o Sociology

o Howard Becker defined sociology as the study of people “doing things together.”

o Sociology

o This reminds us that society and the individual are inherently connected, and each depends on the other.

o Sociology

o Sociologists study this link: how society affects the individual and how the individual affects society.

o Society Is….

o A society is a group of people who share a culture and live more or less together. They have a set of institutions which provide what they need to meet their physical, social, and psychological needs and which maintain order and the values of the culture.

o Social structures are the more or less stable patterns of people’s interactions and relationships. o Institutions are the principal social structures that organize, direct, and execute the essential tasks of living. o Some institutions are:

o Family,

o Educational,

o Economic,

o Religion,

o Law,

o Political Systems

o Sociological Imagination

o The ability to see the relationship between individual experiences and the larger society.

o Cool Insights from Sociology

o Humans cannot be understood apart from social context (i.e. society) o Society makes us who we are by structuring out interactions and laying out an orderly world before us o Society is a social construction, that is an idea created by humans (i.e. doesn’t exist in the biological world but only in the social world) through social interaction and given a reality through our understanding of it and our collective actions.

o Society Influences You o Death…

Related to society? o Baby Names o What Does Society Look Like? o While the idea of society is familiar, describing it can be difficult. Ultimately society is made up of many different components, such as culture, race, family, education, social class, and people’s interactions.

o People who share a culture and territory o Meaning through Interaction

o People actively and collectively shape their own lives, organizing their social interactions and relationships into a meaningful world.

o Sociologists study this social behavior by seeking out its patterns.

o Patterns are crucial to our understanding of society

o Society

o Society is a group of people who shape their lives in aggregated and patterned ways that distinguish their group from other groups.

o The Social Sciences o Social Sciences are the disciplines that use the scientific method to examine the social world, in contrast to the natural sciences, which examine the physical world.

o Examples of social sciences include ….? o How Sociology fits in

o Levels of Analysis

o We can study society from different levels:

o Microsociology is the level of analysis that studies face-to-face and small-group interactions in order to understand how they affect the larger patterns and institutions of society.

o Microsociology focuses on small-scale issues.

n

Ex: Symbolic Interactionism

o Macrosociology is the level of analysis that studies large-scale social structures in order to determine how they affect the lives of groups and individuals.

o Macrosociology focuses on large-scale issues.

n Ex: Functionalism, Conflict Theory

o How We Use Levels of Analysis

o Pam Fishman took a micro-level approach to studying issues of power in male–female relationships.

o She found that in conversation, women ask nearly three times as many questions as men do, perhaps because a speaker is much more likely to ask a question if he or she does not expect to get a response by simply making a statement.

o When conducting research, methodology involves the process by which one gathers and analyzes data.

o Quantitative research translates the social world into numbers that can be treated mathematically; this type of research often tries to find cause-and-effect relationships.

o Any type of social statistic is an example of quantitative research.

o Qualitative research works with non-numerical data such as texts, fieldnotes, interview transcripts, photographs, and tape recordings; this type of research often tries to understand how people make sense of their world.

o Participant observation, in which the researcher actually takes part in the social world he or she studies, is an example of qualitative research.

o Take Away Points

o Humans cannot be understood apart from the social context they live in (society, culture and time + place)

o The world around us profoundly shapes and influences who we are, how we behave and even how/what we think.

The broken windows theory is a criminological theory that visible signs of crime, anti-social behavior and civil disorder create an urban environment that encourages further crime and disorder, including serious crimes.

Description: psychology notes- bronfenbrenner ecological theory

Ecological Systems Theory explains how the inherent qualities of a child and his environment interact to influence how he will grow and develop

The microsystem is the smallest and most immediate environment in which the child lives. As such, the microsystem comprises the daily home, school or daycare, peer group or community environment of the child.

The mesosystem encompasses the interaction of the different microsystemswhich the developing child finds himself in. It is, in essence, a system of microsystems and as such, involves linkages between home and school, between peer group and family, or between family and church.

The exosystem pertains to the linkages that may exist between two or more settings, one of which may not contain the developing child but affects him indirectly nonetheless. Other people and places which the child may not directly interact with but may still have an effect on the child, comprise the exosystem. Such places and people may include the parents’ workplaces, the larger neighborhood, and extended family members.

The macrosystem is the largest and most distant collection of people and places to the child that still exercises significant influence on the child. It is composed of the child’s cultural patterns and values, specifically the child’s dominant beliefs and ideas, as well as political and economic systems. Children in war-torn areas, for example, will experience a different kind of development than children in communities where peace reigns.

The chronosystem adds the useful dimension of time, which demonstrates the influence of both change and constancy in the child’s environment. The chronosystem may thus include a change in family structure, address, parent’s employment status, in addition to immense society changes such as economic cycles and wars.

Social structure, in sociology, the distinctive, stable arrangement of institutions whereby human beings in a society interact and live together. Social structure is often treated together with the concept of social change, which deals with the forces that change the social structure and the organization of society.

Social structure operate on three levels within a given society: the macro, meso, and micro levels.

Although it is generally agreed that the term social structure refers to regularities in social life, its application is inconsistent. For example, the term is sometimes wrongly applied when other concepts such as custom, tradition, role, or norm would be more accurate.

Studies of social structure attempt to explain such matters as integration and trends in inequality. In the study of these phenomena, sociologists analyze organizations, social categories (such as age groups), or rates (such as of crime or birth). This approach, sometimes called formal sociology, does not refer directly to individual behaviour or interpersonal interaction. Therefore, the study of social structure is not considered a behavioral science; at this level, the analysis is too abstract. It is a step removed from the consideration of concrete human behaviour, even though the phenomena studied in social structure result from humans responding to each other and to their environments. Those who study social structure do, however, follow an empirical (observational) approach to research, methodology, and epistemology.

Social structure is sometimes defined simply as patterned social relations—those regular and repetitive aspects of the interactions between the members of a given social entity.

Elements of social structure

1.

‘ Status’ simply indicates the position a person occupies in a group.

2. A role is the expected behavior associated with a specific social status. Role has an aspect of action which is nothing but a cluster of inter –related structures around specific rights and duties and duties and associated with a particular status position within a group of social situation. A persons’ role in any situation is defined by the set of expectations for his behavior held by others and by the persons himself. Ralph Linton referred to role as dynamic aspect of status: a role is the totality of all the culture patterns associated with particular status.

3. Norms are social rules that specify appropriate and inappropriate behavior in given situations. They afford a means by which we orient ourselves to other people. Folkways- (Folkways are the customs or conventions of everyday life), mores (Mores include an aversion for societal taboos, such as incest. The mores of a society usually predicate legislation prohibiting their taboos), and laws (Law the system of rules which a particular country or community recognizes as regulating the actions of its members and which it may enforce by the imposition of penalties)are types of norms

4. Values are broad ideas regarding what is desirable, correct and good that most members of a society share. Values are so general and abstract that they do not explicitly specify which behaviors are acceptable and which are not.

5. Culture consists of the beliefs, behaviors, objects, and other characteristics common to the members of a particular group or society. Through culture, people and groups define themselves, conform to society's shared values, and contribute to society.

6. Social groups - consists of two or more people who regularly interact and share a sense of unity and common identity.

Lillian Ruben (1976) Sociological views on today’s families generally fall into the functional, conflict, and social interactionist approaches

Table 15.1 Theory Snapshot Theoretical perspective

Major assumptions

Functionalism

The family performs several essential functions for society. It socializes children, it provides emotional and practical support for its members, it helps regulate sexual activity and sexual reproduction, and it provides its members with a social identity. In addition, sudden or far-reaching changes in the family’s structure or processes threaten its stability and weaken society.

Conflict

The family contributes to social inequality by reinforcing economic inequality and by reinforcing patriarchy. The family can also be a source of conflict, including physical violence and emotional cruelty, for its own members.

Symbolic interactionism

The interaction of family members and intimate couples involves shared understandings of their situations. Wives and husbands have different styles of communication, and social class affects the expectations that spouses have of their marriages and of each other. Romantic love is the common basis for American marriages and dating relationships, but it is much less common in several other contemporary nations....